{"id":568827,"date":"2023-12-12T10:13:55","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T15:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.therobotreport.com\/?p=568827"},"modified":"2023-12-15T11:34:07","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T16:34:07","slug":"mujin-finalizes-series-c-extension-logistics-robots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therobotreport.com\/mujin-finalizes-series-c-extension-logistics-robots\/","title":{"rendered":"Mujin finalizes Series C extension for logistics robot controllers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mujin

Mujin TruckBot uses MujinController technology to unload trailers, as seen here at Automate 2023. Source: Mujin<\/p><\/div>\n

Mujin Inc. today announced that it has finalized its Series C extension round with an additional $18 million, bringing its total Series C funding to $104 million. The Tokyo, Japan-based company said it plans to use the funding to advance the accessibility of its MujinController platform for robotics integrators and end users.<\/p>\n

“It has been quite a roller coaster ride,” Ross Diankov, CEO of Mujin US, told The Robot Report<\/em><\/a>. “From the beginning, our [trade show] booths attracted attention. It wasn’t just sensors, vision, or motion planning; we’re trying to bridge the gap of these disparate technologies for a coherent system, which culminated in our MujinController, the first intelligent robot controller on the market.”<\/p>\n

Founded in 2011, Mujin said in a release<\/a> that it “works with many of the world\u2019s largest companies to make material handling applications easier to deploy, more accurate, and less costly.” The company<\/a> has designed its controllers<\/a> as a common platform for industrial and collaborative robots for pick-and-place<\/a> and other logistics applications.<\/p>\n

“When you look at robotics as a whole, no single company stands out because of its interdisciplinary nature,” Diankov said. “It requires a lot of effort to unify technologies, which is exactly the challenge we tackled.”<\/p>\n

MujinController starts with digital twins<\/h2>\n

The MujinController<\/a> uses “machine intelligence” and “real-time digital twins” to enable robots to operate autonomously and reliably in production, said Mujin. The company claimed that its approach can help developers improve automation precision and safety for existing and new applications.<\/p>\n

“It’s a real paradigm shift — we do not teach by demonstration,” Diankov said. “We infuse the robot with a digital twin to understand its surroundings, and only then do we do motion planning. Previously, one had to program deterministic waypoints for robots.”<\/p>\n

What does “real-time” mean?<\/p>\n

“Every millisecond, in regular and predictable intervals, MujinController gathers data from all pipelines,” replied Diankov. “Once we have the state of the environment, the robot can simulate into the future and plan many moves ahead to find the optimal path.”<\/p>\n

But what if the robot’s state itself changes?<\/p>\n

“If some exception happens, or even if the power goes off, then the robot has to recover itself for safety,” said Diankov. “It’s a pretty big thing that many in automation struggle with. Things will always happen on the line. How to recover easily — that’s where non-volatility comes in, like RAM on a computer. NVRAM survives shutdowns.”<\/p>\n