More so, in 2023, the startup landed its first big industrial customer, German manufacturing company ZF Lifetec. ZF Lifetec initially used its existing delivery robots, called the Cartken Courier has the abiotic to hold 44 pounds and reassemble an Igloo cooler on wheels.
“Our food delivery robot started moving production samples around, and it’s quickly turned into our busiest robot of all,” Bersch said. “That’s when we said, hey, there’s like real use cases and real market need behind it, and that’s when we started targeting that segment more and more.”
Cartken was still pressing ahead on their delivery sidewalks business, including locking in a partnership with Uber Eats and Grubhub for last-mile delivery operations across US college campuses and in Japan.
Yet, the early success with ZF encouraged the startup founders, who also include Jack Stelman, Jonas Witt, and Anjali Naik, to expand their business model. Switching Cartken’s robots from theri original food delivery mission to a more industrial point of view. The AI behind the robots is trained on years of food delivery data, and the devices are designed to traverse various terrains and weather conditions.
Meaning that the robots have the capacity to travel between indoor and outdoor settings. And due to data collected from delivering food on Tokyo streets, the robots have the capacity to rest and maneuver obstacles.
Bersch also added, “We have a navigation stack that is parameterizable for different robot sizes,” and that “All the AI and machine learning and training that went into that is like transferring directly to the other robots.”
The company also recently announced that they will be deepening their four-year relationship with Japanese automaker Mitsubishi, which originally helped the company get the needed certifications to operate their delivery robots on the streets of Tokyo.
“We’re definitely seeing a lot of traction across various industrial and corporate sites, from automotive companies to pharmaceutical to chemical,” he added. “All these companies typically have people moving stuff from one building to another, whether it’s being moved by hand, on a cart, or a small forklift, and that is really what we’re targeting.”, reported TechCrunch.
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