Big week for robotics around here, huh?
This morning, US-Israeli robotics startup Shifters announced that it’s raised a $10.2M seed round led by Ace Capital Partners, bringing total funding to $15M. Other participants in the round include Aurelius Capital Management, Corner Ventures, and Arkin Capital.
The company says the money will accelerate the development of its autonomous ground robot teams, which they say will “help operators extend reach, improve situational awareness and preserve human life in dangerous environments.” That means robots that can be sent into dangerous environments first to clear rubble, navigate tunnels, and operate in jammed or debris-filled areas before human teams move in.
“When we founded Shifters, our primary focus was to fulfill the most noble of causes, which is preserving human lives,” Assaf Chaprak, CTO and co-founder of Shifters, told Tectonic. “We’ve arrived at an era where it’s finally technologically feasible to take people out of harm’s way and allow robots to go first, and through that make a significant impact on the world in a very positive way.”
At the front: Chaprak and his co-founder, Ofer Ballin (CEO), set up Shifters in 2023 out of real-world experience. Chaprak was in the Israeli Air Force (most recently as a major), then went on to work for video and computer vision tech companies in the US.
That tech experience combined with time in the military led the team to want to build robotic, autonomous systems that could keep humans (forward-deployed humans, in particular) out of harm’s way. So far, the company has developed three products:
- RITA: The software and command layer that “helps robotic systems interpret intent, adapt to changing conditions, and execute autonomous tasks with confidence.”
- TRUST: A family of robotic platforms that (like another platform we covered this week) look a lot like rugged robotic dogs. The legs, Chaprak said, give the robots peak maneuverability, and then you can basically strap whatever you want onto it. He described the base model as “a tray with legs.”
- DIGITAL TWIN: A virtual simulation and analysis tool that “mirrors Shifters robots, environments, and missions in a virtual space.”
Chaprak says they’ve already tested their stack with “clients…in the security and national security domain” (including units within the US Army). They’ve spent most of the last three years working on R&D alongside these users to make sure the platform fits exactly what they need.
All-seeing: So far, ISR has emerged as the most fitting use case for Shifters robots, but because the “tray with legs” is payload agnostic, they could theoretically do a lot more than that, Chaprak said. They could theoretically be effective in all “areas where there is a potential threat and [users] want to…avoid having to send a human being first to take the risk.”
“The main aim of all of our applications is sending robots first into a dangerous environment, keeping people out of harm’s way,” he added. “[That applies] to ISR, to perimeter patrol, to hazardous material scanning, and more.”
Plus, the robot is pretty small and portable, which makes it ideal for infantry, Chaprak said.
“They can be carried both by soldiers and operators into the field, or they can be carried by unmanned ground vehicles to where they need to go,” he said.
Churn ‘em out: With this new pile of cash, Chaprak said that their goal is to further hone the robots’ autonomous capabilities and enter into larger-scale production.
“Our ultimate goal is to reach full autonomy,” he said. “This is done gradually through increasingly more and more autonomous capabilities, kind of in a copilot-type [way].”
“We’re still…tweaking and optimizing the final details, but now [Shifters] is at a point where…we see the demand from our clients, and the demand is massive,” he added. “We need to prepare ourselves to be able to deliver at scale, so a big part of this push is to expand our production lines [and] set up new production lines in order to fulfill the need.”
Chaprak says that TRUST will be at “TRL eight…if not nine” by the end of the year.