Japan's Softbank to support Rapyuta Robotics

The SoftBank Innovation Program is a program of SoftBank Corp. (“SoftBank”), a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp., designed to facilitate the introduction of promising new technologies into the commercial marketplace. In the second round of the Program, SoftBank will provide funding and market intelligence to support the prototyping, development and market testing of Rapyuta Robotics’ cloud robotics platform.

 “We have the in-house technical expertise and resources we need to make cloud robotics a reality,” says Gajan Mohanarajah, CEO of Rapyuta Robotics. “With support from SoftBank for product prototyping, and access to their customer channels for market testing, we will be able to demonstrate the business value of this cutting-edge new technology. We are excited to show the world how we can leverage the cloud to make robotics dramatically more accessible to business markets.”

Rapyuta Robotics’ platform could make it significantly easier for businesses to deploy robot and drone solutions without needing in-house robotics expertise. By integrating robot hardware, software, sensor data, and applications in the cloud – where powerful data centers manage the heavy computation – Rapyuta’s platform lets end-users focus on their business processes instead of on managing robot hardware or software infrastructure.

“While improvements in technology are helping to make robotics more accessible to markets, the ability to integrate all the required hardware, security and software expertise remains a barrier for most companies,” says Mohanarajah. “Rapyuta Robotics wants to make robotic systems user-friendly so customers can focus on the big picture. We are excited to work with SoftBank to commercialize this service.”

Rapyuta Robotics and SoftBank will jointly develop and market test Rapyuta’s new drone service with customers in application areas such as security, surveying, inventory management, and infrastructure inspection. Rapyuta Robotics aims to have its first robotic service deployments ready for market testing with select customers later this year.

Since its establishment in 2014, Rapyuta's team has grown to 33 employees, and has offices in Japan, Switzerland and India.

About SoftBank Innovation Program
The SoftBank Innovation Program’s aim is to create new value by combining the innovative solutions and technologies of other companies with SoftBank’s own resources.  SoftBank selects applications that it deems to be innovative and superior, and then provides funding for prototype development, environments for test marketing and other forms of assistance. Based on the test marketing results, SoftBank considers product or service commercialization.