GrayMatter raises $45 million for robots with ‘physics-informed AI’

Based in Los Angeles Gray or unclear issueA startup tackling some of the toughest problems in manufacturing with AI-powered robots announced today that it has raised $45 million in a second funding round. This investment brings the total capital raised by the company to $70 million, led by Wellington Managers with the participation of several new and existing investors.

While robotic automation has been around for a long time, with companies like Apple using it for various assembly line functions, GrayMatter is pioneering what it describes as “physics-informed AI” — a technology that enables robots to self-program and handle high-mix, high-tech manufacturing environments. variance. This is essentially the heart of the company, which has seen significant growth since its launch in 2020.

“There are a lot of parts, differences and variables that a traditional robot can’t handle, so we’re working to bridge the gap with our technology for companies facing a production backlog of at least two years,” Ariane Kabir, co-founder and CEO of the company, told VentureBeat.

GrayMatter solves high-mix, high-variance manufacturing problems

American Manufacturing industry He deserves $2.5 trillion, but companies suffer from massive backlog due to the lack of skilled workers. There are up to 3.8 million vacant jobs Across departments, preventing teams from meeting delivery deadlines. Not to mention that in many cases, when there are enough workers, they fail to deliver the quality that companies expect.

Kabir, who was part of the USC Center for Advanced Manufacturing, saw these issues while communicating with several industry stakeholders. The situation was worse for companies in high-mix, high-variability manufacturing that handles a variety of parts.

This prompted Big to launch GrayMatter, focusing on building robotic solutions that can handle the labor-intensive surface treatment and finishing work of all types of products being manufactured – from football helmets to aviation equipment and everything in between.

In essence, the company provides organizations with intelligent robotic cells, a workspace of sorts where robots using physics-based artificial intelligence, called GMR-AI, perform tasks like sanding, buffing, polishing, spraying, painting, blasting and inspecting. But here’s the thing: unlike automated robots that are programmed to do one specific task (which takes weeks), these machines program themselves by describing a high-level task. It adapts its process parameters based on observed performance to autonomously execute the desired task.

The entire self-programming takes a few minutes. Once this is done, the robots start producing very consistent results quickly. This addresses capacity and quality issues that teams often encounter through manual efforts. Furthermore, cells can monitor their health to reduce the risk of failure.

According to Kabir, GrayMatter’s physics-based AI attempts to leverage existing manufacturing process models and knowledge of experimental data to deliver exactly what is expected from a robotic cell.

“It imposes physics-based process (or knowledge) models as a constraint on the AI ​​system to ensure that nothing is learned that conflicts with existing models/knowledge. For example, the system could impose a constraint that increased pressure on the sander will cause increased deflection The part is being sanded. We do not need to perform a large number of tests to know this already known fact. If the measured data contradicts this limitation, it is very likely that the sensor is faulty, or the part/tool ​​is not installed correctly.

Accreditation in various sectors

Since its launch, GrayMatter has deployed twenty intelligent robotic cells specifically designed for organizations in sectors such as Aerospace Defence, specialist vehicles, marine and boating, metal fabrication, sports equipment, furniture and sanitary ware.

The company did not share specific customer names, but noted that these cells cumulatively treated more than 7.5 million square feet of product surface area for them.

“The work we do at GrayMatter for companies… has become an integral part of their core operations. It is a huge responsibility, and we are witnessing a generational shift in our lifetimes,” Kabir added. “We are in a fortunate position to be able to help millions of people elevate their lives.” And improve it through our advanced technology powered by artificial intelligence.”

Overall, the CEO said the company’s solutions work 2-4 times faster than manual operators and reduce consumer waste by 30% or more.

In one case, an organization that uses its technology to sand RV covers was able to increase the time it took to complete the job from one hour to six minutes per part.

As a next step, GrayMatter plans to use this funding to scale its team in Los Angeles and create next-generation AI robotic cells targeting more use cases.

“All of our existing customers are asking us for adjacent products and applications because bringing our system to their production floor removes the bottleneck from that application and pushes it up or down. We have a strong product roadmap that we need to deliver. With our recent fundraising, we look forward to creating the next generation of AI Robots As we continue to grow and expand our market, operations, product, and engineering teams to meet this growing customer demand.