Why Cartken pivoted its focus from last-mile delivery to industrial robots

Independent robots, known for its four -wheeled robots that serve food on the campus and through the loud streets of Tokyo, have found a new field of focus: industrial.

CRSTKEN, founder and CEO, told the CHRSTKINA BERSCHCRUNCH that its delivery robots app on industrial environments has always been in the back of his mind while building a startup. When companies started reaching their own robots in factories and laboratories, Cartken took a closer look.

“What we found is in fact that there is a real real need in cases of industrial use and the employee on the site,” said Birch, who co -founded the startup with the former Google engineers behind the Bookbot project. “Sometimes there is even [been] More direct value of companies that improve materials or production flows. “

In 2023, the startup fell the first big industrial agent, the German manufacturing company ZF Lifetec. Initially, the ZF LIFETEC used the current connection robots, which are called Cartkeen Course, which can contain 44 rugs and similar to IGLOO cooler on wheels.

“The food delivery robot began to transfer production samples around it, and soon it turned into our most crowded robot.” “This is when we said, hey, there are like real use and the need for the real market behind it, when we started targeting this part more and more.”

At that time, Crartken was still pressing in front of her work on the sidewalk, including locking in partnerships with Uber Eats and GRUBHub for connecting operations in mud all over the campus and Japan.

But this early success with ZF encouraged the founders of startups, which include Jake Station, Jonas Watt and Angaly Nike, to expand its business model. Persh said that Cartken robots from delivering food to an industrial environment were not a major challenge. Artificial intelligence is trained behind robots on years of food delivery data, and devices are designed to overcome different terrain and weather conditions.

This means that robots can travel between internal and external settings. Thanks to the data collected from food saving in the streets of Tokyo, robots are able to respond and maneuver around obstacles.

Cartken, which raised more than $ 20 million from 468 Capital, Fund Fund, Vela Partners and other project companies, began building their automatic fleet to reflect its axis on industries. The company released CartKen earlier this year, a larger version of Cartkeen Course and could reach 660 pounds. The company also released Cartken, which was designed for internal delivery, and also works on something similar to an automatic missile message.

“We have a staple transmitted to the teacher of different robot sizes.” “All artificial intelligence, machine learning and training that entered into this is similar to the transition directly to other robots.”

Cartkeen recently announced that it deepened its four -year relationship with Mitsubishi, which originally helped the company with certificates required to operate its delivery robots in the streets of Tokyo.

Melco Mobility Solutions, a company under Mitsubishi, has announced that it will buy approximately 100 robots from CRSTKEN to use in Japanese industrial facilities.

He said: “Certainly we are witnessing a lot of traction across various industrial sites and companies, from car companies to medicines to the chemical.” “All of these companies usually transport things from one building to another, whether by hand, on a cart, or a small forklift, and this is what we really target.”

Persh said that Kardin will continue to continue delivering food and consumer in the last mile, but it will not expand it, adding that they are still doing a lot of tests to obtain new capabilities on the delivery methods in the last mile.