RobotUnion, the leading pan-European robotics acceleration programme, closes its first call with 204 submissions from 32 countries. RoboValley is a partner of RobotUnion.

  • 20 applicants will receive acceleration services and will be financed with up to €223,000 in equity free cash.
  • The robotic solutions participating in RobotUnion will take part in the digitalisation of the European industry, as part of the framework of the Horizon 2020 programme and the Digital Single Market of the European Commission.
  • The area of manufacturing has attracted most of the applications, followed by open disruptive innovation, healthcare, agri-food and civil engineering.

RobotUnion is the first remote European acceleration programme entirely focused on robotics startups and SMEs, which counts on funding from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation framework. The first call of this programme closed this month with 204 application submissions from 32 countries. The highest concentration of participants was in Spain (18%), followed by Denmark (11%), Germany (9%), The Netherlands (7%), UK (7%), Poland (7%) and Italy (5%).

At the forefront of the applications are automated drones and other UAVs, as well as agribots for crop protection and automation for smart farming and agriculture. Social robots and exoskeleton solutions trend in the healthcare vertical. Some of the proposed solutions for manufacturing are robotic arms, grips and accessories, as well as transport and delivery of items. Submission examples for civil engineering are assistants for the construction of buildings or city monitoring through automation for aerial vehicles. Software solutions for the programming and repairing of robots and robots for exploration can be found as open disruptive innovations.

The technologies used by these startups and SMEs focus primarily on systems development as well as on artificial intelligence, mechatronics and human-robot interactions.

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The next steps of RobotUnion

The 20 winners that will participate in the feasibility study and initiate the first acceleration programme of RobotUnion will be announced after a face-to-face and pitching process, which will take place on 13 September at Tecnalia Headquarters in San Sebastian (Spain). This Jury Day will consist of a live technical and non-technical capabilities validation process for the highest ranking candidates.

The winners may get up to €223,000 equity free and the 4 best startups will receive support from RobotUnion’s investment partners: Chrysalix, Odense Seed & Venture and Blumorpho to raise around €1M of private financing. FundingBox will be supporting the public funding.

Click here to read the full press release.