KUSA Technology, a commercial robotics solution provider, has recently completed seed and angel rounds of financing totalling tens of millions of RMB, with seed round investor Voltec and angel round investor Sidetrack Ventures. The funds from the two rounds of financing are planned to be used to deepen technology research and development, accelerate engineering landing, and strengthen market expansion.
Founded in June 2023, KUSA Technology focuses on unmanned operation general-purpose robots in multiple scenarios of sanitation sweeping & cleaning and collection & transfer, completing the development of L4-level sweeping robots in October 2023 and putting them into urban roads to start operation.
"The application of autonomous driving technology is accelerating to the ground, especially in the sanitation industry, which is affected by labour shortage. " said Yang Xi, CEO of KUSA Technology. The KUSA Technology team has many years of experience in the autonomous driving industry and entrepreneurship, and is familiar with the development of autonomous driving technology and supply chain integration, and finally selected the sanitation scene as the first business landing direction. At the same time, this also means dealing with the challenges of cleaning capacity, information management and safety.
Road cleaning means identifying and sweeping all kinds of debris in an open scene, which is different from avoiding obstacles in passenger cars, mines, harbours and other scenarios, as sanitation operations require active contact with obstacles. Therefore, there is a higher demand for continuous accuracy. For example, in the road edge cleaning operation, the unmanned robot needs to maintain centimetre-level accuracy for a long period of time in order to complete the sweeping and to judge the road condition in a timely manner.
In this regard, KUSA Technology introduces a visual multimodal solution, which is based on a large amount of accumulated sanitation data for training, and imports the corresponding semantic data of the sanitation operation on the cognitive side, in order to identify the road conditions before and after the operation. The overall architectural solution reduces the hardware cost of the machine and effectively extends its service life.
On this basis, KUSA Technology has developed an operation cloud platform for unmanned operation management, which monitors the decision-making of the end-side in real time to ensure reasonable scheduling, quick response and stable execution; and accumulates data during operation to continuously improve the end-side cluster operation capability.
Meanwhile, KUSA Technology researches and develops its own closed operating system to meet the actual needs of sanitation scenarios. Compared with the open-source ROS2 robot operating system, KUSA's closed operating system is optimised for specific scenarios, which improves communication efficiency, enhances deployment stability, reduces resource consumption, and further enhances information security.
KUSA Technology's immediate downstream customers are commercial sanitation companies, with plans to enter overseas markets. KUSA Technology has already delivered its first mass-produced product six months after its founding, and expects to save 50% in long-term operating costs once the product is in place.
KUSA Technology's core team comes from Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University and other colleges and universities, and has many years of experience in the fields of unmanned vehicles, vehicle manufacturing, chips, intelligent sanitation, etc.; the consultant team includes senior people in the fields of environmental protection, robotics, urban information technology, etc. CEO Yang Xi has the experience of technology and operation management in many Fortune 500 companies, and CTO Tao Sheng has served as a senior architect of Baidu's unmanned vehicles, and has experience in R&D in the field of unmanned vehicles. CTO Tao Sheng was a senior driverless architect of Baidu, and has rich experience in R&D in the driverless field.
Investor Profile
Vodafone
Founded in 2005, Voltec is an IT and integrated service provider focusing on urban operation management and environment. The company provides customers with full-scene information technology solutions around the fields of urban operation and management, integrated environmental IT, and public health. At the same time, it provides a full range of operation services, covering rubbish classification AI unmanned operation, waste-free town-wide intelligent integrated management, urban intelligent housekeeper, third-party supervision and evaluation of environmental hygiene, and environmental knowledge and new media operation services.
Stead Ventures
Founded in 2017, Side Venture Capital is a registered Venture Capital Fund Manager of CDFA, the governing unit of Ningbo Yongjiang Science and Technology Innovation Zone Science and Technology Financial Service Alliance, and a member unit of Zhejiang Venture Capital Association and Ningbo Securities Investment Fund Industry Association. Based on the Yangtze River Delta, Striker Venture Capital has a core layout of new-generation information technology, new energy, high-end equipment and other national strategic emerging industries, and focuses on investing in high-growth and outstanding startups in the fields of artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and new energy and new materials. With more than 10 fund products issued, and thanks to the 10-year accumulation in the field of technology project incubation, Stek Ventures and its team have invested in more than 50 high-quality projects at home and abroad, basically in the early stage of business startups, and invested in E-Pao Group, Anvil Intelligence, Hongjie Technology, Bura Technology, Super Intelligent Home (UIOT), Gufo Technology, CKIH and Zhendian Technology. All of them have grown into star projects in their respective fields. The core team of Stead Ventures comes from various professional fields such as real enterprises, incubation investment, investment banking and financial regulation, etc., and has many years of domestic and overseas project investment experience and rich investment management experience. Stead Ventures adheres to the principle of focusing on innovative technology and value discovery, and is a long-term partner of high-quality innovative companies. Stead Ventures also focuses on integrating domestic and overseas quality resources to provide in-depth services to its portfolio companies.
