Clik here to view.
The robot from Laputa, the Studio Ghibli island in the sky, and inspiration for Rapyuta’s name.
As the robotics industry gains steam, one question is looming large: how do you make and where do you put robot brains? The hardware of robotics is the obvious challenge, but without the right software a robot is a lifeless hunk of metal. And without an internet connection, even the best software is little more than a definition of the machine’s limits rather than its possibilities. That is why leading tech companies in Japan like Yahoo Japan and SoftBank are creating cloud infrastructure for robotics software. They might be giants, but that has not deterred Rapyuta Robotics, a Japan-Switzerland startup from joining the race.
Dr. Gajamohan Mohanarajah (CEO) and Arudchelvan Krishnamoorthy (COO), two long-time friends from Sri Lanka who studied abroad together at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, co-founded the startup. Rapyuta Robotics – named after the robots featured in a famous Hayao Miyazaki film – aims to create a cloud infrastructure that will allow all robots connected to it to share each others experiences. This reduces the amount of programming that needs to go into the robot initially and means that all connected robots should get progressively more adaptable.
Proving this concept is a heavy challenge. Rapyuta Robotics’ engineering team is developing the robot-based and cloud-based code from scratch. It’s a no-shortcuts approach and it is getting ready to hit the market.
Entering via drones
The first product Rapyuta Robotics is looking to roll out is drones for security and infrastructure inspections. Surveying parking lots and private property is an obvious application of drone technology, but Rapyuta Robotics feels that the infrastructure market is just as promising.
Bridges, tunnels, and other major structures need to be regularly examined. Careful review can be dangerous work, which is why Rapyuta Robotics is programming its drones to carry out the inspections. They fly close to the structure, take pictures, and can access the cloud to compare the current snapshot to previous ones taken in the same location.
Getting pictures taken from the exact same spot, close enough to a large object that one wrong move can impair the drone is too difficult for humans. Rapyuta Robotics’ drones can be programmed to carry everything out autonomously.
That’s also possible indoors. “Everyone flies drones outside because it is easy to get the GPS signals and get the positioning. But, when it comes to indoors, you are not going to get the signal, you need to create a virtual GPS field. Our speciality is that we can create that field for a really cheap price,” Krishnamoorthy explains.
Though drones are the company’s first product, Krishnamoorthy stresses that Rapyuta Robotics is much more. “For now we are focusing on drones, but we are a robot company. Right now we are using flying robots,” he says.
Clik here to view.
Rapyuta says its technology will make its drones better than out of the box alternatives.
Funding a dream team
Krishnamoorthy is a serial entrepreneur. After earning a master’s degree in financial mathematics from Columbia University and working for Nomura Securities, he co-founded Fund of Tokyo, a global macro hedge fund. Working primarily out of Japan, he is the startup’s business leader.
Dr. Mohanarajah moved to Switzerland after finishing his undergraduate studies in Tokyo. There, he earned a Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich while working on RoboEarth, a pre-cursor of Rapyuta Robotics’ cloud technology. He has also achieved YouTube fame for creating Cubli, a cube that can jump up from a resting position to balance perfectly on one corner.
The rest of the eight-person team is similarly credentialed, with many coming over from the RoboEarth project. The technical side of the startup remains stationed in Switzerland, while Krishnamoorthy works on the business side in Japan.
“You need a really good internet connection to do cloud robotics. Japan and Korea are two of the top countries for internet speed and infrastructure,” he says, explaining why Rapyuta Robotics chose Japan. That’s not to say Europe is entirely forgotten. “In parallel we are going to focus some of the business in Europe, particularly with wind-farm inspections,” he adds.
So far, he’s got the attention of investors. This January, Rapyuta Robotics scored JPY 351 million (US$2.95 million) in seed funding (PDF link) before it could even show off a complete prototype.
The funding came after eight months of bootstrapping the project. Cyberdyne, a Japanese robotics company, led the investment and was joined by SBI Investments, Fuji Creative Corporation, and V-Cube.
With a summer target for having the complete prototype, Krishnamoorthy is on the lookout for more investments. This time he expects the final amount to be “double digit millions” in US dollars.
This post How two Sri Lankans are building a robotic cloud in Switzerland and Japan appeared first on Tech in Asia.