LONDON – Self-driving tech startup Robotic Research said on Thursday it has raised dollars228 million from investors including SoftBank to scale its commercial division’s solutions for vans, buses and logistics vehicles.
The fundraising round also includes an investment from Luminar Technologies, which makes lidar sensors used in self-driving cars.
Research Robot has been researching many types military applications for the U.S. Department of Defense for 20 years, including self-driving road clearance vehicles used in Afghanistan and self-propelled shuttles for wounded soldiers in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.
The company also operates freight services – where driverless trucks follow the lead truck for a certain distance on highways – for the US Army.
Robotics research executive Alberto Lacaze told Reuters the price of sensors had made commercial applications for self-driving cars unfeasible for years, but that has now changed and the unit The company’s RR.AI commercial is currently leveraging it.
“That’s one of the reasons we’re looking to invest because the price of the sensor and the hardware has changed to the point where it’s commercially usable,” says Lacaze. “We’ve scaled up and this allows us to do it faster.”
While most of the time is focused on self-driving car Based on robotaxis, more investment is pouring into less complex applications in logistics that can generate revenue much sooner.
Lacaze said his company for the military involves operating in dusty “edge case” areas where there are no GPS, without road markings or any well-defined roads – experience that other self-driving tech companies lack.
“We feel very confident moving into the commercial sector, where most of our competitors are working in regulated sectors,” he said.
Over the next year, RR.AI will deploy autonomous vehicles to Canada’s logging industry and some agricultural vehicles. The company is also working on pilot projects using “yard dogs,” or trucks used in distribution yards.
RR.AI is also rolling out partially autonomous systems on buses in Kansas City, Missouri with U.S. bus manufacturer GILLIG and in Connecticut with Canada’s New Flyer Industries bus division NFI Group Inc.
When asked about a possible listing, Lacaze said Robotic Research could go public at some point, but that’s not a priority right now.
“We are more concerned with expansion and savings for our customers now,” he said.
