UK - Edinburgh Robotics wins new funding

Guy
17 March 2006

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Edinburgh Robotics Ltd has secured an equity investment led by Braveheart Ventures Ltd. The investment was completed via the SMART Equity Scheme which is designed to help spin-out companies, by providing matched funding to recipients of the Scottish Executiveтs SMART awards. The funding was provided by Braveheart Ventures in partnership with Bank of Scotland Corporate through its Emerging Business team, and the Scottish Enterprise Scottish Co-investment Fund. This was used to match a SMART award won by the companyтs two founders т Nils Roeder and Joe Halliwell т in 2005, and they recruited experienced technology business advisor Eric Hunter to help achieve the commercial objectives in their first year of operation. Chris Martin of Edinburgh lawyers Lindsays advised them.

The company is developing a ‘toolkit’ called devBot– a software development platform that is expected to dramatically reduce both the time taken and the cost of developing software to control mobile robots.

The use of mobile robots in the home and in leisure pursuits is set to explode over the next 10-15 years, forecasts the Japanese Robotics Association – and Japan already has nearly 50% of the world stock of robots. The use of mobile vacuum cleaners around the house, and mobile lawn mowers to take the drudgery out of cutting the grass is already taking off rapidly – particularly in Japan and the US – and this growth is likely to be augmented by the growing fascination of mobile robots as toys. From a current worldwide market value of around $5.5bn, this is expected to grow to $19bn by 2010.