BMW’s strategic investment arm, BMW i Ventures, announced a new stake in a new company this week. This time, it was Plus One Robotics who found itself at the other end of the investment made by BMW i Ventures. The US-based company is a leading provider of vision software for logistics robots and BMW hopes that its know-how and technology will help it automate its supply chain and logistics.
Plus One Robotics was co-founded by industry veterans including CEO Erik Nieves. It deploys technology enabling any robot hardware to intelligently and autonomously complete monotonous logistics tasks, such as package sorting and depalletization. Plus One also incorporates a “human-in-the-loop” approach that leverages human intelligence to handle exceptions for the variety of items passing from dock to door.
Yonder, Plus One’s robot supervision software enables one human, or Crew Chief, to manage up to 50 robots remotely, allowing companies to adopt a follow-the-sun model and meet the demands of the 24/7 consumer. The main goal of this Series B fundraiser is to capitalize on the company’s current momentum and to expand within its existing customer base to capture more market share through deployments in new customers.
“We believe that Plus One Robotics’ technology will usher in a new era of smart, adaptive robots to bring automation to new heights across not just big markets like automotive but across any supply chain use case where items must be moved from one place to the next,” said Kasper Sage, Partner at BMW i Ventures.
“The beauty of Plus One’s technology is that it combines state-of-the-art computer-vision algorithms with a human-in-the-loop approach, enabling robots to operate at accuracy and throughput levels currently unmatched across industry. Thanks to Plus One, the new era of robotics-driven automation is at last here,” he added. The funding will also support continued product development of its machine-vision software to address new use-cases and applications within the logistics value-chain.
