Parallax Worlds co-founders Aumkar Renavikar (left) and Tanmay Agarwal (proper). | Credit score: Pear VC
Not solely can digital twins and simulation be used to design robots, however they will also be used to emphasize take a look at them. Parallax Worlds final week raised $4 million in seed funding. The corporate plans to make use of the financing for analysis and growth, staffing, and to deliver its product to market.
“The core response [for the product] that we’ve seen is from the phase of AI-based robots,” Tanmay Agarwal, co-founder of Parallax Worlds, stated in a latest episode of The Robotic Report Podcast. “So it may be these steel sanding, grinding, welding, pick-and-place robots that at the moment are being deployed into these factories.”
“The widespread theme to all of those functions is that the robotic has a digicam. And it’s utilizing the digicam to detect the place the half is, [and what] it’s going to be engaged on,” he defined. “So, for the tip customers of those factories, what that mainly means is that it might doubtlessly be programmed quicker.”
The firm‘s founding group has expertise in each superior robotics and industrial automation. Agarwal was skilled in Stanford College’s robotics group underneath Prof. Fei-Fei Li and Prof. Jiajun Wu. He has developed software program for methods starting from residence robots to self-driving automobiles.
Aumkar Renavikar, co-founder and chief know-how officer, studied robotics on the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and supported factory-floor automation initiatives at BMW and Michelin. San Francisco-based Parallax Worlds was a contestant within the 2024 Pitchfire startup competitors at RoboBusiness.
Digital twins allow builders to verify efficiency
Factories and warehouses are adopting robots to attain reshoring objectives and tackle labor shortages. Nonetheless, the transition from a pilot program to full manufacturing is sluggish, expensive, and includes danger. Even primary automation initiatives can require a 12 months and important on-site testing to satisfy the uptime and reliability wanted for manufacturing strains.
Parallax Worlds stated it addresses this problem by enabling robotics builders and operators to completely take a look at, measure, and make sure efficiency utilizing a high-fidelity digital twin earlier than deploying any bodily tools.
“Factories can’t afford robots to fail even for seconds; they want dependable efficiency and defensible ROI [return on investment],” stated Agarwal. “Parallax Worlds offers builders and operators a strategy to measure reliability upfront, compress on-site iteration, and transfer from pilot to manufacturing quicker.”
The firm stated its vertically built-in platform can flip easy video seize corresponding to from an iPhone walkthrough into an correct, interactive 3D surroundings. Robotic growth groups can generate absolutely navigable digital twins from a video and run interactive simulations utilizing actual robotic software program.
Parallax Worlds stated its software program integrates with business physics engines and tooling, together with NVIDIA Omniverse, Unreal, and Unity. It may add lacking layers, together with quick video-to-3D, robotics-specific behaviors, and AI-assisted situation technology, famous the corporate.
Traders search to construct belief in automation
Parallax Worlds stated its seed spherical brings its complete funding thus far to $4.9 million. introduced a $4 million seed spherical, bringing complete pre-seed and seed funding to $4.9 million. Pear VC led the spherical, with participation from GS Futures, Kakao Ventures, and Lightscape Companions, in addition to angels and teams together with Gaingels, Nova Threshold, and Mana Ventures.
Prior backers embody Conviction (Embed), Uncommon Ventures, and Spacecadet Ventures, in addition to Enhance VC.
“Parallax is constructing the lacking simulation layer that bridges robotics R&D and real-world deployment by virtualizing bodily areas to make testing and reliability scalable,” stated Payam Banazadeh, visiting associate at Pear VC. “Their digital-twin platform turns simulation into a real reliability engine, remodeling what used to take years of expensive trial and error into weeks of digital iteration. It’s the sort of foundational shift that may redefine how complete industries construct and belief automation.”
Parallax Worlds plans for enlargement
Reshoring U.S. manufacturing calls for extra automation, however solely the most important producers can shoulder the price and time of conventional deployment cycles. By shifting reliability testing into a practical digital surroundings, Parallax Worlds stated it goals to democratize entry to robotics, enabling extra factories and warehouses to undertake automation with confidence.
Parallax Worlds has signed 5 robotics firms throughout manufacturing, development, and choose consumer-service use instances. They embody Orangewood Labs for industrial automation, BotBuilt for residence development robots, and Rainier Labs for cellular welding robots.
“Parallax lets us validate robotic habits in opposition to actual manufacturing facility situations utilizing our precise management software program,” stated Abhinav Das, CEO of Orangewood Labs. “Having the ability to iterate on notion, planning, and edge-case dealing with earlier than {hardware} is deployed materially accelerates our growth cycle.”
“A whole lot of the [seed] spherical goes into hiring,” Tanmay advised The Robotic Report. “So proper now, I’m hiring for a robotics position and a cloud infrastructure position. We’re searching for wonderful folks to hitch the group.”
“On the go-to market aspect, over the following one and two years, we need to increase into manufacturing as nicely,” he stated. “We need to assist producers and logistics suppliers to deliver these AI-based methods in a quick, low-cost means.”
