Brain Corp., a Softbank-backed firm that makes autonomous systems for robotic floor cleaners, said today that it was expanding into the robotic delivery space. As a first step, the San Diego-based company introduced a proof-of-concept delivery robot, powered by its software brain, called BrainOs, which is capable of towing carts in factories, warehouses and stores. It expects to launch commercially early next year. Eugene Izhikevich, Brain’s cofounder and CEO, told Forbes that the launch is one of many types of robots that he hopes to enable with BrainOS with help from the company’s venture capital funding, which now totals $125 million. “It is my dream to have hundreds of robots in a very short period of time,” said Izhikevich, a 51-year-old computational neuroscientist, who worked in academia before starting the company. “Launching one per year may not satisfy my dream. I’m too impatient.” Brain gained attention late last year when Walmart agreed to roll out 360 floor-scrubbing robots enabled by the BrainOS operating system in its stores. The market for commercial floor-cleaning equipment is large—estimated at roughly $5 billion a year globally—and macroeconomic forces favor the adoption of autonomous solutions. Last month, Forbes profiled startup Avidbots, based near Toronto, whose young immigrant founders have built commercial floor-cleaning robots from scratch and sold a few hundred of them to be deployed in airports and shopping centers. Brain, by contrast, does not build robots but instead focuses on the operating system, which uses artificial intelligence and computer vision to turn existing human-operated machines into autonomous ones. In commercial floor cleaning, it has partnered with industry giants, including Nilfisk and Tennant, as well as with Softbank Robotics, and it plans to take a similar strategy in its expansion to delivery, though Izhikevich declined to identify potential partners. “Brain Corp. is not manufacturing equipment,” he said. “We are a software company because I am a software person.” Izhikevich grew up in Moscow and immigrated to the U.S. after the Russian economy collapsed following perestroika and completed a Ph.D. in mathematics at Michigan State University. As a computational neuroscientist, he published two textbooks and multiple papers, but began to get itchy to do something outside of academia. “Something was always missing,” he said. “I understood a lot about real brains. I wanted to build something.” In 2009, he left academia to launch Brain with the serial tech entrepreneur Allen Gruber. Initially, the company did research and development for Qualcomm, the maker of communications chips, and Darpa, the Defense Department division responsible for emerging technologies. In 2014, Brain moved into the development of machine learning and computer-vision systems for self-driving robots, and launched its first product two years later. It currently has around 500 robots deployed, and it expects to have thousands by the end of the year, according to Phil Duffy, Brain’s vice president of innovation. Brain declined to disclose its revenue. While numerous companies are going after the robot delivery market, Izhikevich said that he believes Brain’s advantage is its ability, from its work in cleaning, to operate in tighter environments with people in them. “We developed a technology that can work in public spaces like Walmart and airports and malls,” he said. Originally, he said, Brain expected to spend five years or more focused on commercial cleaning. However, after the company raised $114 million in the summer of 2017 led by Softbank, it was able to accelerate its R&D. “We were very lucky that Masa [Softbank's Masayoshi Son] has the same dream I do. He wants to see a future where robots take care of us,” Izhikevich said. “So when I met him, I didn’t have to convince him of anything.”
San Diego-based autonomous systems developer Brain Corp is extending its business to the robotic deliveries sector. The SoftBank-backed firm is best known for its autonomous floor cleaners, but it will now begin utilising its BrainOS software's AI and computer vision for driverless deliveries. It is thought that Brain Corp's approach of partnering with larger, industrial floor cleaning companies, like Nilfisk and Tennant, will also be applied to its new business venture. "We are excited about this partnership as we believe our technology can help improve efficiency in a wide range of industries," said Brain CEO David Lee.