Bear Robotics, a Silicon Valley-based manufacturer of indoor service robots, is continuing its advancements in the robotics and artificial intelligence space. The company just announced a strategic investment to fund its Korea-based partner, M2MTech, which specializes in IoT convergence for smart remote and predictive systems with elevators.
Elevator integration is the number one barrier to entry for service robots in multi-level buildings. The technology needed to communicate with modern elevators is the easy part. This can easily be accomplished through software APIs and the building network with the latest generation of elevator controllers. The primary hurdle remains in obtaining the permits for the autonomous operation of the elevator and the fact that every county and state has different regulations that cover elevator operations. This permitting and approval process can often delay a deployment project by 3 to 6 months. Integration into older buildings with “old school” elevator controls presents another obstacle to controlling the building infrastructure, and successful deployment of the service robots.
This investment comes as Bear Robotics now extends their Servi robot line with a fully integrated elevator delivery robot, Servi Lift, which is capable of completing last-mile deliveries inside multi-story buildings such as hotels, senior living communities, ghost kitchens, hospitals, corporate campuses, and other high-rise commercial and residential real estate properties.
“We believe this investment will truly maximize facility efficiencies and minimize user inconvenience,” commented John Ha, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bear Robotics. “The ELSA convergence platform developed by M2MTech provides strong security, interoperability, and connectivity advantages that will set the stage for us to scale our last-mile mobility solutions.”
In engineering Servi Lift, Bear Robotics sought interoperability as its absolute competitive advantage to be applied with major players in the smart elevator market such as OTIS, TKE, Mitsubishi, KONE, Hyundai and Schindler. With the expansion of urbanization, Bear Robotics is bullish on the “smart city” shift to robot-friendly buildings, enhanced access security, and the penetration of smart elevators in smart buildings with strong linkages between systems.
“With the global IoT elevator market forecasted to grow to $64 billion by 2030, it was imperative for us to invest in our close partnership with M2MTech that our engineering teams have built over the last couple of years, and to realize the synergies we believe will advance our last-mile aspirations,” commented Juan Higueros, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Bear Robotics. “We are confident that this collaborative approach will generate more efficient operations for many of our existing customers and open a broad array of new opportunities that will place Bear Robotics in a position to be the world’s leading multi-story robot delivery solutions provider.”
100 trials of Servi Lift are reserved for 2023. Broader rollouts are lined up across the world in 2024.
