Realtime Robotics

Faster than Human Motion in Unstructured Workspaces
Realtime Robotics have invented a specialized processor for generating safe robot motion plans in microseconds, enabling robots to function in unstructured, collaborative workspaces, reacting to other movements as soon as they are perceived.
Accelerating market penetration
We are dedicated to enabling robotics to achieve its long promised future. Sensing and cognition are making enormous strides, driven by the rapid development of autonomous vehicle technology. Human-safe robotic arms and sensitive grasping technologies are also moving rapidly.
Our dedicated motion planning processors are poised to enable systems that can make full use of the wealth of new components, rapidly moving into millions of light manufacturing and complex assembly operations, as well as a multitude of life-enhancing service and inspection roles.
We intend to work with industry leaders to help stitch together easy-to-customize solutions, allowing the tens of thousands of system integrators around the world to outfit the factories, care centers, and homes of the future.
Watch it in action
This specialized processor allows people and robots to work safely together in the same space. This proprietary hardware generates new motion plans as fast as they are being perceived. Watch the video and see it in action!
How do robots plan for unexpected motion (like a hand blocking their path)? Find out as producer Frank Graff takes on Duke robotics professor Daniel Sorin.
Success Story
Realtime Robotics Secures $2M in Seed Funding
[Press Release from Realtime Robotics, July 3, 2018]
Realtime Robotics, Inc Awarded Competitive Grant from the National Science Foundation
Realtime Robotics has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $225,000 to conduct research and development (R&D) work on Risk-Aware Motion Planning for Autonomous Vehicles.
This R&D work will change the way that autonomous vehicles plan their motions, particularly in challenging urban driving scenarios. Realtime Robotics is working on a special-purpose computer processor that can plan thousands of times faster than existing solutions, and this speed will enable it to make many plans at a time, each of which considers a different possible set of behaviors from the other agents—cars, bicycles, pedestrians—in the environment. This technology will enable risk-aware, normal speed driving, which is critical for widespread adoption by the general public.
[Press Release from Realtime Robotics, 30 October 2017]
Investors include SPARX Group Ltd., Scrum Ventures, and Toyota AI Ventures
BOSTON, MA – October 30, 2017— Realtime Robotics, which develops breakthrough technology that unleashes robots and autonomous vehicles from their current limitations, announced today that it has secured $2 million in seed funding to further its growth. Key investors in the seed round include SPARX Group Ltd., Scrum Ventures, and Toyota AI Ventures, a venture capital subsidiary of Toyota Research Institute (TRI).
Founded in March 2016 by Duke University professors Dan Sorin and George Konidaris, Realtime Robotics enables complex robotic motion planning tasks to be accomplished up to 10,000 times faster than previously possible using a proprietary special-purpose processor – allowing robotic systems to instantly react to their environments, and compute how and where to move as their situation is changing. This groundbreaking ability to instantly plan motion in response to rapidly changing conditions overcomes one of the primary challenges preventing robots and autonomous vehicles from achieving their enormous potential.
July 25, 2017 Realtime lands its first commercial contract for proof of concept
Realtime announced its first commercial contract with an undisclosed multinational customer to apply its real-time motion planning processors in a high volume, unstructured pick and place workcell. The contract is worth up to $15 million rolled out across a three-year horizon.