Toronto’s Xaba.ai to open robotics lab with $2M in seed funding

The Toronto-based developer of AI-based robotics software, Xaba, announced it has raised US$2 million in a seed extension round of funding to establish and staff a robotics lab. In addition, the company says the funding will help accelerate delivery of Xaba’s manufacturing platforms: xCognition and xTrude.

According to Xaba, Xcognition leverages AI to create a digital twin that accurately models the physics of an industrial robotic or cobot system, including its elastic, dynamic and mechanical behavior, as well as the location and shape variances of the workpiece. This is achieved through a combination of user input, machine vision and other sensor input.

With the virtual environment in place, and a target task assigned, the system’s machine learning is free to explore various approaches to the problem, until it arrives at a solution optimized for speed, accuracy and consistency. The system then translates that optimized solution into whatever programming code is needed (e.g. C++, Python or a proprietary language like ABB, Kuka, Fanuc, etc.) to execute the assigned task, be it drilling, welding, riveting, etc.

Xtrude is similar to Xcognition except tailored to the FDM-based additive manufacturing process. Most recently, Xtrude was used to 3D-print the chassis of the APMA’s Project Arrow concept EV from carbon reinforced polymer.

Whatever the application, Xaba says the end result of its hardware-agnostic, AI-powered robotics algorithms is greater consistency, throughput and accuracy in any robotic or cobot system, while eliminating the need for specialized robotics programming talent.

In 2023, the company partnered with Lockheed Martin and Rolleri Robotic to verify Xcognition’s performance. Test results demonstrated a 10 times performance improvements in absolute positioning, and five times improvements in relative positioning and trajectory accuracy for cobots using Xaba’s Xcognition system.

“With the integration of AI-powered cognition and awareness, robots become easy to adopt and profitable for businesses across various tasks and sizes,” said Massimiliano Moruzzi, CEO of Xaba. “With this funding in place, we can now establish our Xaba manufacturing platforms as the go-to solutions for implementing new intelligent robotics, creating automated factories and developing disruptive new processes and materials.”

The funding round was led by BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund with participation from Hitachi Ventures and existing investor Hazelview Ventures.
www.xaba.ai