The company's technology uses a camera-based system and AI models to detect objects and navigate the environment, without reliance on GPS. This allows the robots to operate indoors and handle various outdoor conditions. The bulk of the newly raised funds will be used to scale its sidewalk delivery bot business and to explore new indoor use cases. Cartken's robots are already proving beneficial, saving employees over 10,000 hours in transportation in labs and factories in 2023.
Key takeaways:
- Cartken, a startup that operates a sidewalk delivery bot business, has raised $22.5 million in total funding, with $10 million in its latest round led by 468 Capital.
- The company, founded by former Google engineers, uses autonomous robots to deliver food on college campuses and in cities through partnerships with Uber Eats, Grubhub, and Mitsubishi Electric.
- Cartken is now expanding its robots' capabilities to navigate both outdoor and indoor environments, including factories, labs, and industrial buildings.
- The startup uses a hardware agnostic AI-first approach to autonomy, which includes a camera-based system and AI models to detect objects and navigate environments, and is not reliant on GPS, allowing it to operate indoors.