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 may also be used to emphasize check 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 carry its product to market.
“The core response [for the product] that we’ve seen is from the section 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 metallic 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 top customers of those factories, what that principally means is that it might doubtlessly be programmed quicker.”
The firm‘s founding workforce has expertise in each superior robotics and industrial automation. Agarwal was educated in Stanford College’s robotics group underneath Prof. Fei-Fei Li and Prof. Jiajun Wu. He has developed software program for programs starting from residence robots to self-driving automobiles.
Aumkar Renavikar, co-founder and chief expertise 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 substantiate efficiency
Factories and warehouses are adopting robots to realize reshoring objectives and handle labor shortages. Nevertheless, the transition from a pilot program to full manufacturing is gradual, expensive, and includes danger. Even primary automation tasks can require a 12 months and important on-site testing to fulfill the uptime and reliability wanted for manufacturing traces.
Parallax Worlds stated it addresses this problem by enabling robotics builders and operators to totally check, measure, and ensure efficiency utilizing a high-fidelity digital twin earlier than deploying any bodily gear.
“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 approach 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 comparable to from an iPhone walkthrough into an correct, interactive 3D setting. 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 could add lacking layers, together with quick video-to-3D, robotics-specific behaviors, and AI-assisted situation era, famous the corporate.
Traders search to construct belief in automation
Parallax Worlds stated its seed spherical brings its complete funding up to now 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 embrace 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 accomplice 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 type of foundational shift that may redefine how total 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 associated fee and time of conventional deployment cycles. By shifting reliability testing into a sensible digital setting, 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 circumstances. They embrace Orangewood Labs for industrial automation, BotBuilt for residence development robots, and Rainier Labs for cell welding robots.
“Parallax lets us validate robotic habits in opposition to actual manufacturing unit circumstances utilizing our precise management software program,” stated Abhinav Das, CEO of Orangewood Labs. “With the ability to iterate on notion, planning, and edge-case dealing with earlier than {hardware} is deployed materially accelerates our growth cycle.”
“Loads of the [seed] spherical goes into hiring,” Tanmay informed The Robotic Report. “So proper now, I’m hiring for a robotics function and a cloud infrastructure function. We’re searching for wonderful individuals to affix the workforce.”
“On the go-to market facet, over the following one and two years, we wish to develop into manufacturing as properly,” he stated. “We wish to assist producers and logistics suppliers to carry these AI-based programs in a quick, low-cost manner.”
