As robotics has superior, business has steadily adopted extra robots to automate away many sorts of grunt work. Greater than 540,000 new industrial robots have been put in worldwide in 2023, taking the variety of complete industrial robots lively to above 4 million, per IFR.
Industrial robots usually excel at repetitive duties, however they discover it difficult to carry out exact duties, deal with delicate supplies, and modify to altering circumstances — a robotic in a restaurant’s kitchen would get in the best way greater than be useful, for instance. That’s the reason many industrial processes are nonetheless handbook.
South Korean startup RLWRLD goals to unravel this downside with a foundational AI mannequin that it has constructed particularly for robotics by combining giant language fashions with conventional robotics software program. The corporate says this mannequin will allow robots to make fast and agile actions and carry out some quantity of “logical reasoning” as nicely.
“Utilizing RLWRLD’s basis mannequin, processes that require quite a lot of handbook work could be fully automated by studying and copying human experience, making work environments extra environment friendly,” Jung-Hee Ryu, founder and CEO of RLWRLD, mentioned in an unique interview with TechCrunch.
The startup is now popping out of stealth with 21 billion KRW (about $14.8 million) in seed funding. The spherical was led by enterprise capital agency Hashed, and Mirae Asset Enterprise Funding and International Mind additionally invested.
Notably, RLWRLD has attracted an extended checklist of huge strategic buyers — Ana Group, PKSHA, Mitsui Chemical, Shimadzu and KDDI from Japan; LG Electronics and SK Telecom from Korea; and Amber Manufacturing from India.
RLWRLD mentioned the seed funding can be used to fund proof-of-concept tasks with its strategic buyers; safe computing infrastructure like GPUs, buy robots, and gadgets to gather in depth information; and rent high analysis expertise. The startup may even use the brand new cash to develop superior hand actions involving five-fingers — a functionality that’s not but been demonstrated by its rivals like Tesla, Determine AI and 1X, Ryu mentioned.
Ryu mentioned RLWRLD can also be working with its strategic buyers to discover methods to automate completely different human-centric workflows utilizing its AI mannequin. They’re collectively getting ready a humanoid-based autonomous motion demonstration, scheduled for later this yr, Ryu mentioned. As well as, the corporate is working to develop a platform that may assist varied sorts of robots, together with industrial, collaborative, autonomous cellular robots and humanoids.
Based in 2024, RLWRLD is Ryu’s third startup. His second startup, Olaworks, was acquired by Intel in 2012, and finally turned Intel’s Korea R&D heart inside its laptop imaginative and prescient division. And in 2015, he based a startup accelerator, Future Play, that focuses on deep tech firms.
When requested what impressed him to start out a brand new firm once more, Ryu mentioned he observed how shortly AI startups have been growing in quantity within the U.S, Europe and China, whereas comparable AI startups in Korea and Japan have been comparatively absent.
He spoke with over 30 AI professors from Korea and Japan about their challenges — every thing from the shortage of infrastructure like information and GPUs, and the obstacles that discouraged them to launch a enterprise — and the alternatives obtainable.
“I made up my mind that it could be strategically helpful to prioritize robotics basis fashions (RFM) over the technologically saturated discipline of LLMs, capitalizing on Korea and Japan’s notable world strengths in manufacturing,” he mentioned.
Quickly afterwards, he introduced on board six professors from top-ranked establishments in South Korea, together with KAIST, SNU, and POSTECH, together with their analysis groups, to launch RLWRLD.
RLWRLD isn’t alone in tackling this downside. Startups like Skild AI and Bodily Intelligence are constructing related foundational fashions for robotics, as are bigger companies like Tesla, Google DeepMind, and Nvidia.
However Ryu believes his startup has a great begin, because it already has the AI and robotics consultants it must develop foundational fashions for robotics, in addition to humanoid robots with excessive diploma of freedom (DoF).
“Moreover, [such companies] usually depend on low-DoF robots corresponding to two-fingered grippers. RLWRLD has already secured a high-DoF reference robotic, and subsequently expects superior efficiency outcomes,” he mentioned.
Ryu additionally mentioned that because of its strategic buyers, RLWRLD can shortly collect precious information from manufacturing websites situated close by. In 2024, a report indicated that Japan and South Korea collectively accounted for 9.2% of worldwide manufacturing manufacturing.
RLWRLD goals to generate income as early as this yr by proof-of-concept (PoC) tasks and collaboration demonstrations with strategic companions.
The startup’s long-term objective is to cater to factories, logistics facilities, and retail shops, and even robots that can be utilized in home environments to assist with family chores. Within the meantime, the precedence is to focus on industrials since they’re keen to pay essentially the most and have robust demand for automation.
The startup has 13 workers.
