Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC), the corporate venture capital company of the Bosch Group, leads a growth financing round in MegaRobo. The Chinese high-tech robotic company with over 100 full time employees is headquartered in Beijing and integrates cutting-edge machine vision and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide modular and affordable automation solutions for lab automation, smart retail and light industrial sectors. “MegaRobo’s technology increases efficiency in production automation. Already today, robots from MegaRobo are used for special applications in the end-of-line production of household appliances at Bosch”, says RBVC Managing Director Dr. Ingo Ramesohl. “Beyond these applications, we see many other opportunities for cooperation between MegaRobo and Bosch”.
Cutting-edge robotics solutions for multi-billion-dollar market
MegaRobo builds its solutions upon proprietary motion control technologies with close to 100 patents. Based on these core technologies, MegaRobo offers cost-effective collaborative robots that address a variety of new industries. The robots are safe, easy to use, integration-friendly and are already actively used in laboratory automation, intelligent retail and the manufacturing industry.
MegaRobo’s prime target market is life science, which includes some of the fastest growing areas, e.g. genomic sequencing, biopharmaceuticals and in-vitro diagnostics (IVD). Laboratory automation is increasingly being applied to enhance productivity, improve staff safety, minimize errors and lower operational cost. According to a Marketsandmarkets study, the global lab automation market alone is valued at USD 5.2 billion in 2017 and reaches a 5.1% CAGR from 2017 to 2022. China is playing an increasingly important part. Due to the country’s large and ageing population and the corresponding rising healthcare spending, it will particularly benefit from efforts to systematically upgrade its industries where robots are seen as an important element of high-end manufacturing. The booming domestic pharmaceutical industry and the general willingness to automate low-valued-added and labor-intensive lab processes additionally bolster this trend.
Technology transfer designed for broad availability
Traditional industrial robots are designed for highly standardized working environments, where robots are programmed to perform repetitive tasks on the factory floor. MegaRobo targets to introduce robots to non-conventional scenarios by integrating the latest AI and machine vision technologies and redesigning the robots from the ground up with the end-users in mind. It is the company’s goal to bring robots into more and more industries where people can benefit from this liberating technology.
Moreover, MegaRobo empowers all its robots with fully embedded connectivity capabilities, thus unlocking additional value-added services to the customers. Every robot can be used as a data-gathering terminal to transmit real-time operational data to the MegaCloud platform. MegaRobo then offers AI-based algorithms to utilize this data for purposes of equipment monitoring, predictive maintenance and risk management.
World-class Team and Investors
MegaRobo’s founders have accumulated decades of experience in the areas of motion control and industrial automation. PhDs from leading institutions around the globe spearhead the R&D team. Alongside with RBVC and Gobi Partners, Joy Capital and FutureCap participated in the funding round.
SOURCE: Bosch
