An indoor construction robotics startup is using a New York incubator to shorten the distance between a simulated movement and an arm performing it in the lab. RoboBuilt founders Alex Gray and Shean Rahman described the work in a November 12 account from the advising executive director of Viam Launchpad. They hope to have a commercial deployment operating by their seed funding round.
Viam built its six-month program around access to physical equipment and the software that connects it. Its New York lab includes robot arms, sensors and testing hardware. Each cohort has room for five to ten startups. Viam values the resources and services at more than $100,000, including $30,000 in credits for its own platform. Engineers from the company help participants with integration and deployment.
For RoboBuilt, the attraction is having routine actions and connections to peripheral equipment already available in software. Gray described moving from a digital plan to physical movement in minutes. That is a founder’s account of one development step. Installation at a paying customer remains a separate milestone for the team.
What a first installation reveals
A lab arm can repeat a motion with its tools and workpiece in known positions. The first customer installation introduces a different floor plan, people working nearby and a schedule that leaves limited time for adjustments. An incubator organized around that installation gives founders a reason to encounter those constraints while they still have access to the engineers who helped build the prototype.