For the first time, all four finalists for the award were newcomers in the industry.

“The finalists stand out due to their high quality and show that the robotics industry has entered a new period,” said Andra Keay, IERA awards chair and vice president of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. “For the first time, all finalist companies are young and were formed within the last 10 years. These newcomers have raised more than $500 million of investment and employ more than 1,300 people. We look forward to seeing more young robotics companies with big commercial goals in the future.”

Realtime Robotics has pioneered the optimization of robotic workcells to improve performance and decrease cycle times. The tool solves the task of motion planning at high speed, evaluating hundreds of thousands of possible motions before settling on an optimized path, sequence and tool rotation for each robot. 

Traditionally, programming a multi-robot workcell is a time-consuming job. And, when the robots’ tasks change, the planning process must start all over again. Realtime’s software automates the process.

The other three award finalists were the GR-1 humanoid robot from Fourier Intelligence; the OW12 mobile manipulator robot from Youibot Robotics; and the cognitive robotics platform from Neura Robotics.