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The humanoids had sucked a lot of air out of the room. After all, it’s much easier to create journalism for robots that look and move like humans. Ultimately, however, the effectiveness and scalability of such designs has yet to be proven. For some time now, Collaborative robots Founder Brad Porter has eschewed humanoid robots. Machines that can think like humans are something else entirely.
As the name of the two-year-old startup suggests, Collaborative Robotics (Cobot for short) is interested in the ways humans and robots will collaborate moving forward. The company has yet to reveal its system, though Porter told me last year that the “new collaborative robot” system is neither a human nor a mobile manipulator mounted on the back of an autonomous mobile robot (AMR).
However, the system has begun to be rolled out in selected locations.
“The launch of our first robots in this space earlier this year, along with today’s investment, represent two major milestones as we bring humanized collaborative robots to today’s industries,” says Porter. “We see a virtuous cycle where more robots in the field leads to improved AI and a more cost-effective supply chain.”
Further rollout will be aided by a new $100 million Series B, led by General Catalyst and including Bison Ventures, Industry Ventures and Lux Capital. This brings the Bay Area company’s total funding to $140 million. Teresa Carlson of General Catalyst is also joining the company in an advisory role.
Cobot has a pedigree, too, with a staff that includes former employees at Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, NASA, and Waymo. Porter himself spent more than 13 years at Amazon. When his tenure with the company ended in the summer of 2020, he was leading the retail giant’s industrial robotics team.
Amazon became one of the world’s largest drivers and consumers of industrial robots during that period, and the company’s now ubiquitous AMRs stand as a testament to the efficiency of bringing human workers and robots together.
Naturally, AI will be key to the company’s promise to “solve human problems,” while the move away from the human form factor is an attempt, in part, to reduce the cost of entry for deploying these systems.
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