Funding will enable Xaba to democratize robotic automation and drive sustainable manufacturing

January 09, 2024 06:30 AM Eastern Standard Time

TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Xaba, developer of the first AI-powered cognitive software solution to automate programming and deployment of robotics and CNC machines, today announced it has raised US$2 million in a seed extension round of funding to bring to market AI-driven fabrication processes and intelligent autonomous machines. The funding round was led by BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund with participation from Hitachi Ventures and existing investor Hazelview Ventures. The investment will be used to establish and staff a new robotics lab and accelerate the delivery of two Xaba manufacturing platforms.

Xaba is augmenting industrial robots and cobots with xCognition, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software solution. xCognition leverages innovative proprietary machine learning algorithms to model the elasto-mechanical-dynamic behavior of industrial robotics and cobots, as well as workpiece variances. This includes variances in location and shape, using proprietary rule-based language models to eliminate coding of robotics programs. xCognition solves the challenges of deploying industrial robots by completely automating how they are programmed and adopted. This solution not only increases accuracy, consistency, and throughput, but also significantly reduces the time and costs of robotics deployments.

“AI represents a wave of change in the automation industry, removing significant barriers to technology adoption in manufacturing and other industrial sectors. Xaba is a great example of how the integration of AI is empowering industrial robotics technologies – enabling them to self-generate programs, substantially improve their accuracy and precision, and provide highly valuable feedback to users,” said Thomas Park, lead partner of BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund. Concurrent with the funding round, Park has been appointed to the Xaba board of directors.

This year, Xaba partnered with Lockheed Martin and Rolleri Robotic to demonstrate 10 times performance improvements in absolute positioning, and five times improvements in relative positioning and trajectory accuracy for cobots using Xaba’s manufacturing platforms.

“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.”

“Cognitive systems will be the future of next generation robotics and Xaba’s AI-based software solution has demonstrated that it can elevate the performance of high precision robotics such as welding and drilling by enabling adaptive learning, real-time decision-making, and seamless human-robot collaboration,” said Gayathri Radhakrishnan, Partner at Hitachi Ventures. “As a well-known force in this industry, with a strong focus on robotics and manufacturing, an investment in Xaba gives us the ability to explore this domain further.”

Industrial Artificial Intelligence Solutions for Manufacturing

Xaba has two manufacturing platforms – xCognition and xTrude – which use proprietary, state-of-the-art industrial artificial intelligence (AI) to provide AI-powered cognitive industrial automation, consistency, robustness and high execution quality. Its platforms eliminate the need for constant human supervision, reprogramming, and waste – factors that significantly impact the return on investment of any major manufacturing or construction process.

xCognition is Xaba’s AI-powered software solution. This industrial robotics digital twin captures and models the true physics of any industrial robotics system (elastic, dynamic, mechanical, tooling). This includes workpiece variances both in location and shape, leveraging rules-based language models and multi-modal datasets that capture legacy data and best practices to enable any robotics system to execute tasks such as drilling, welding (MIG, TIG & Laser), assembling, riveting, laser, data acquisition, and more with maximum accuracy, repeatability, and minimum human supervision.

About Xaba

Toronto-based Xaba develops new processes and AI-powered software solutions to automate and enable sustainable manufacturing. Its intellectual property uses artificial intelligence (AI) to empower industrial robots and cobots with synthetic cognition. By enabling robots to self-generate their programs, Xaba is disrupting current business models, opening the door to new manufacturing processes, and creating a completely new, landscape for robotics automation. For additional information, visit xaba.ai.

Source: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240109300568/en/Xaba-Closes-2-Million-Seed-Extension-to-Deliver-Intelligent-Self-programming-Robotic-Systems-for-Manufacturing

December 01, 2023 06:45 AM Eastern Standard Time

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, at COP28, Energy Dome has announced funding commitments for its first CO2-based and innovative thermo-mechanical energy storage system to be located in Sardinia, Italy. Funding will be in the form of a project-level grant commitment of up to €35,000,000 from Breakthrough Energy Catalyst and €25,000,000 Venture Debt financing commitment from the European Investment Bank, both subject to the satisfaction of funding conditions. The funds are being made available through the EU–Breakthrough Energy Catalyst partnership.

Breakthrough Energy Catalyst funds and invests in first-of-a-kind commercial projects for emerging climate technologies. By investing in these opportunities, Catalyst seeks to accelerate the adoption of these technologies worldwide and reduce their costs.

The European Investment Bank, also recognizing the transformative potential of Energy Dome’s CO2 Battery to combat climate change and be a clean technology champion in Europe, is expected to provide €25,000,000 of Venture Debt financing, backed by InvestEU, to the project. The EU aligns capital with Catalyst using funds available from Horizon Europe & Innovation Fund through the InvestEU Program with the European Investment Bank, as implementing partner of the European Commission.

This combined investment is an endorsement of Energy Dome’s ready-to-be-deployed, long-duration energy storage proposition. Energy Dome’s robust performance (high round-trip efficiency) and capital expenditure requirements are significantly more competitive than the Lithium-Ion benchmark, providing a solution to the critical problem of utility-scale long-duration energy storage, which is at the core of the renewable energy transition.

The project will use a standard frame 20MW/200MWh CO2 Battery, which can supply energy to the grid for ten consecutive hours. It will be the first of a series of identical units using the same technology design, allowing Energy Dome to unlock cost reductions and accelerate the bankability of future units of the modular, standardized CO2 Battery frames. The CO2 Battery does not use materials from rare metals and its main components are based on already existing and known supply chains enabling job creation within Europe.

The Commercial Operation Date of the storage facility is expected to take place in the third quarter of 2024.

Claudio Spadacini, Founder and CEO of Energy Dome, said: “What better time than during COP28 to announce the collaboration with the EU-Breakthrough Energy Catalyst partnership, which is a true catalyst for our company. The collaboration will accelerate the commercialization of our market-ready technology and will be the first of many identical full-scale CO2 Batteries. We have already started to be at the core of the energy transition. Remember, our world can’t wait.”

Gelsomina Vigliotti, EIB Vice-President, said: “As the EU climate bank, the EIB is committed to building public and private partnerships to support the development of disruptive green energy technologies and to enable these to grow to scale in the short-term. I am delighted to announce the EIB’s intention to support Energy Dome with a EUR 25 million Venture Debt financing. It is an inspiring example of game-changing technology that we need more of in Europe and worldwide. At the same time, the project will promote job creation and economic growth in Sardinia.”

Mario Fernandez, Head of Catalyst at Breakthrough Energy, said: “Long-duration energy storage is a critical enabler of the clean energy transition and this partnership with Energy Dome, the European Commission and European Investment Bank will help scale the technology so it can be commercialized sooner. This announcement demonstrates the tangible impact of Breakthrough Energy Catalyst’s approach to fund impactful projects that can move us closer to an emissions-free future.”

About Energy Dome
Energy Dome is revolutionizing energy storage and enabling grid decarbonization by making solar and wind power dispatchable 24/7. The company invented and developed the CO2 Battery, a long-duration energy storage system that makes long-duration energy storage viable globally today. The properties of carbon dioxide allow the system to store energy efficiently and cost-effectively, with a modular and site-independent footprint. CO2 Batteries use readily available, off-the-shelf components from reliable, existing supply chains, providing a scalable pathway to store massive amounts of intermittent renewable energy and accelerate the energy transition. For more information, please visit energydome.com.

About Breakthrough Energy
Breakthrough Energy is committed to accelerating the world’s journey to a clean energy future. The organization funds breakthrough technologies, advocates for climate-smart policies, and mobilizes partners around the world to take effective action, accelerating progress at every stage.

Breakthrough Energy Catalyst is a novel platform that funds and invests in first-of-a-kind commercial projects for emerging climate technologies. By investing in these opportunities, Catalyst seeks to accelerate the adoption of these technologies worldwide and reduce their costs.

Catalyst currently focuses on five technology areas: clean hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuel, direct air capture, long-duration energy storage, and manufacturing decarbonization. In addition to capital, Catalyst leverages the team’s energy-infrastructure-investing and project-development expertise to work with innovators on advancing their projects from the development stage to funding and ultimately, to construction. Learn more about Breakthrough Energy and Catalyst at breakthroughenergy.org.

About the European Investment Bank
The EIB is the lending institution of the EU, owned by its Member States and makes long-term finance available for sound investment to advance the EU’s policy goals. Between 2019 and 2022, the EIB Group provided more than €45 billion in financing for projects in Italy.

In 2019, the EIB’s Energy Lending Policy was adopted to end financing to any unabated fossil fuels energy projects, including natural gas, the first Multilateral Development Bank (MDB) to do so. In 2021, the EIB became the first MDB to align our financial activities with the Paris Agreement. Through its Climate Bank Roadmap, the EIB Group aims to support €1 trillion of investment in climate action and environmental sustainability through the critical decade, 2021-2030. The EIB committed to increasing investment in climate action and environmental sustainability to more than 50 % of the EIB’s annual lending by 2025 – last year, that was exceeded with 58%.

About the European Commission
The European Commission is part of the executive of the European Union. The Commission has a range of policies and programmes to deliver on its climate ambitions. Under the European Green Deal, the ‘Fit for 55′ package was adopted in July 2021 with the aim of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030. The EU-Catalyst partnership is one of the key actions through, which the European Commission seeks achieve this goal through mobilizing private funding through public support.

Horizon Europe is the EU’s research and innovation framework programme worth €95.5 billion (2021-2027). It dedicates 35% of its budget to climate action. At the same time, the programme also supports a range of partnerships which mobilise private funding to deliver on pressing global challenges and modernise industry through research and innovation. The programme also includes the European Innovation Council (EIC) that supports start-ups and companies in the whole innovation chain, from research to validation, acceleration and commercialization.

The Innovation Fund is one of the world’s largest funding programmes for the demonstration of low- and zero-carbon innovative solutions and technologies funded entirely from EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) revenues and estimated at €40 billion until 2030. The Fund has so far provided almost €7 billion in grants for over 100 projects through calls for proposals. On 23 November 2023, the Innovation Fund opened its 7^th call for proposals and its first auction.

The InvestEU programme provides the European Union with crucial long-term funding by leveraging substantial private and public funds in support of a sustainable recovery. It also helps mobilise private investments for the European Union’s policy priorities, such as the European Green Deal and the digital transition. The InvestEU programme brings together under one roof the multitude of EU financial instruments currently available to support investment in the European Union, making funding for investment projects in Europe simpler, more efficient and more flexible. The programme consists of three components: the InvestEU Fund, the InvestEU Advisory Hub and the InvestEU Portal. The InvestEU Fund is implemented through financial partners that will invest in projects using the EU budget guarantee of €26.2 billion. The entire budget guarantee will back the investment projects of the implementing partners, increase their risk-bearing capacity and thus mobilise at least €372 billion in additional investment.

Source: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231201183451/en/Energy-Dome-Announces-Funding-Commitments-From-Breakthrough-Energy-Catalyst-and-the-European-Investment-Bank-to-Support-Construction-of-Its-First-Standard-Commercial-Scale-CO2-Battery

Investment will enable the commercialization of the Augmenta Construction Platform electrical module and support the development of plumbing and mechanical modules

TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Augmenta, the company automating building design for the construction industry, today announced it has raised US$11.75 million in a seed extension round that will be used to commercialize the company’s groundbreaking design platform for the construction industry. The investment was led by Eclipse with participation from Hazelview Ventures, BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund, and Suffolk Technologies. The investment brings Augmenta’s total funds raised to date to US$15.85 million.

“This follow-on investment further reinforces our commitment to the company, and we look forward to our continued work with Francesco and his incredible team.”Tweet this

With the funds raised in this seed extension, Augmenta plans to double its team over the next nine months across engineering, sales, and support. Augmenta will also use the investment to build on the momentum that the company has achieved to date. This includes implementing commercial pilots with several electrical engineering firms that are currently participating in Augmenta’s formalized feedback program.

Augmenta is on track to commercialize the Electrical System Design (ESD) module of its groundbreaking Augmenta Construction Platform (ACP) in Q1 2024. The ESD module generates fully constructible, code-compliant designs of electrical raceway routing for electrical engineers and contractors. The company is also planning to expand into adjacent markets with the development of plumbing and mechanical modules.

Augmenta is solving a critical problem in the construction industry

In the construction industry today, legacy tools and processes used for designing complex building systems like electrical, plumbing, and HVAC make it extremely difficult and time consuming to ensure designs are feasible for construction. Time and resource pressures lead to errors that require significant rework, slowing down both design and construction, and substantially increasing risk, uncertainty, and costs for contractors and engineers – and in turn real estate developers and owners.

At a time when the industry continues to face talent and material shortages, pressure mounts due to the inherent complexity of building design. Augmenta is providing innovative new technology to solve these challenges. Through its technology platform, Augmenta automates the entire design process for contractors and engineers, ensuring the designs they create are error-free, constructible, and optimized according to client needs. These designs are created in minutes to hours instead of weeks to months.

“Our vision is to completely disrupt an element of the construction industry that has remained largely unchanged for decades,” said Francesco Iorio, CEO of Augmenta. “Building on the success of the ESD beta program that is currently underway, we are very well positioned to scale these initial tests as pilots and begin generating revenue as we prepare for our expansion into adjacent markets.”

Augmenta was recently recognized as a Top 50 Preconstruction Future Disruptor by BuiltWorlds and named in CB Insights’ 2023 AI 100 list of the world’s most promising AI startups, in addition to receiving a strong level of interest from the industry at large through its Augmenta Feedback Community. The Augmenta Feedback Community gives strategic industry partners, as well as forward thinking engineering firms and contractors, access to early builds of Augmenta’s software and the opportunity to guide its product development. Augmenta has a waitlist of almost 30 companies that have applied to participate in this beta program and will expand participation through the end of 2023.

“The construction industry has yet to reap the productivity, scalability, and sustainability benefits of advanced technology other industries have been transformed by,” said Charly Mwangi, Partner at Eclipse. “Using generative AI coupled with a world-class technical team, Augmenta’s design platform will completely turn the construction industry on its head.” Concurrent with the investment in Augmenta, Mwangi will join the Augmenta Board of Directors.

“Since our initial investment in Augmenta last year, we remain confident that its construction platform is an industry changing technology,” said Roger Poirier, co-founder of Hazelview Ventures. “This follow-on investment further reinforces our commitment to the company, and we look forward to our continued work with Francesco and his incredible team.”

“Design is a significant area of opportunity for construction efficiency improvements,” said Wan Li Zhu, co-founder and Managing Director of Suffolk Technologies. “By investing in and partnering with Augmenta to apply breakthrough AI to assist skilled building designers and engineers, we will reduce costs and accelerate the delivery of construction projects across the industry.”

About Augmenta

Founded by pioneers of Generative Design at Autodesk, Augmenta is a software company that is disrupting and driving a new level of efficiency for the construction industry by automating building design. The company’s flagship Augmenta Construction Platform (ACP) significantly accelerates the time it takes to detail and estimate designs, eliminates costly redesign and rework, and reduces overall risk. It also ensures buildings are designed to be energy efficient, use sustainable materials, are safer to build, and contribute less waste to landfill during construction. Once available commercially, this innovative new cloud-based platform – which uses artificial intelligence, including machine learning and mathematical optimization – will enable contractors and engineers to create error-free, constructible, code-compliant designs of buildings and systems in hours instead of weeks. For additional information, visit augmenta.ai.

About Eclipse

With ~$4 billion in assets under management, over 80 portfolio companies, and a team of investors with deep operating expertise in technology, manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, healthcare and consumer products, Eclipse is a leading U.S. venture capital firm. Its leadership team has the experience necessary to create and scale complex operations. Eclipse partners with exceptional companies that make physical industries more efficient, resilient, and profitable. For more information, visit www.eclipse.vc.

Source: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230621955156/en/Augmenta-Raises-US11.75-Million-in-Seed-Extension-to-Disrupt-the-Construction-Industry-Through-Automated-Building-Design

Integration of Xaba’s xCognition physics-informed, machine learning model with Rolleri cobots proven to increase accuracy and consistency in welding operations in manufacturing

June 06, 2023 08:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

TORONTO & VIGOLZONE, Italy–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Xaba, developers of xCognition, the first AI-driven robotics and CNC machine controller, today announced a collaboration with Rolleri Holding SpA focused on the development of a cognitive, autonomous collaborative robot (cobot) workcell for welding operations in manufacturing. The collaboration enables the integration of xCognition with Rolleri Robotic cobots.

“We developed xCognition to provide a synthetic brain for commercial industrial robots and cobots used in a range of applications from consumer and PCB assembly to industrial manufacturing for the automotive and aerospace sectors”Tweet this

Xaba solving the complex challenges of deploying industrial robots in manufacturing
Adopting and deploying industrial robots is tedious, time-consuming, and expensive. It requires highly skilled individuals who know specialized robotics programming languages. In addition, the accuracy of robots used today is limited by the lack of machine learning models that accurately represent the physics of a robot’s operation. Xaba is changing this with its xCognition artificial intelligence (AI)-driven control system. With xCognition, any industrial robot can be empowered with both deep and cortex intelligence, enabling it to fully control its body and understand its environment using sensor data such as images, sounds, temperatures, and accelerations. By completely automating how robots are programmed and adopted, Xaba is solving the challenges of deploying industrial robots by not only increasing accuracy, consistency, and throughput but also significantly reducing the time and costs of robotics deployments.

To showcase the benefits of xCognition, Xaba and Rolleri recently completed ISO 9283^* tests in Xaba’s robotic lab. A FARO Vantage Laser Tracker System was used to acquire all data needed to train the xCognition machine learning model and to validate trajectory accuracy improvements. The successfully completed tests showed 10 times performance improvements in absolute positioning and trajectory accuracy, and five times improvements in relative positioning and trajectory accuracy.

“We developed xCognition to provide a synthetic brain for commercial industrial robots and cobots used in a range of applications from consumer and PCB assembly to industrial manufacturing for the automotive and aerospace sectors,” said Massimiliano Moruzzi, CEO of Xaba. “Our goal is to make it easier and much more efficient for anyone to adopt robotics for assembly, welding, and drilling by significantly reducing the time required to calibrate, program, and supervise robots. This partnership with Rolleri is an important step in enabling us to achieve this goal.”

“Rolleri’s mission is to provide the best solutions to our customers in compliance with three main requirements: quality, safety, and economic advantage,” said Fabio Farina, General Manager at Rolleri Robotics. “Artificial Intelligence is going to play a key role in significantly reducing the effort and cost of adopting and successfully deploying automation in any shop floor – from small mom and pop shops to large corporations. This collaboration with Xaba fits our mission to integrate AI in our robotics products so we can continuously add value to our solutions and deliver significant benefits to our customers.”

As a follow up to the initial tests, Xaba and Rolleri will be undertaking Tig and Laser welding tests to further validate welding quality improvements such as improved accuracy and repeatability.

About Xaba
Toronto-based Xaba is a pioneer and leader in applying industrial artificial intelligence (AI) to enable a world of intelligent and sustainable manufacturing. Its intellectual property uses industrial AI to turn any industrial robot into a “generative robot” by making it intelligent and autonomous in both generating its own programs and executing tasks such as welding, drilling, assembling, and additive manufacturing. Xaba’s solutions disrupt current manufacturing automation business models by making it possible for industrial and collaborative robots to perform tasks without the high costs of program generation and expensive machine tools. For additional information, visit xaba.ai.

About Rolleri Holding SpA
Founded in 1987 as a family-owned company, Rolleri SpA has become an important reference point for all those who deal with metal sheet bending. The combination of passion, dynamism, experience, and research has allowed the company to develop the brand internationally. Located in the province of Piacenza, the company is a leader in planning, development, and production of press brake tools for the OE market and after sales. In 2020, Rolleri Robotic was launched with the mission of leveraging collaborative robotics to innovate and automate major fabrication processes such as welding. For more information visit rollerirobotic.com.

SOURCE: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230606005524/en/Xaba-and-Rolleri-Partner-to-Develop-a-Cognitive-Autonomous-Cobot-Workcell

Italian climate startup Energy Dome, which has developed a “CO₂ Battery” for storing renewable energy, has closed a €40 million (~$44M) Series B round — bringing the total raised for its novel energy storage solution to €54M (or just shy of $60M).

The round was co-led by Eni Next, the corporate VC arm of Italian energy giant Eni; along with Neva SGR, the VC company owned by European banking group Intesa Sanpaolo. Existing investors also participated, including Barclays’ Sustainable Impact Capital, CDP Venture Capital, Invitalia, Novum Capital Partners and 360 Capital. Other investors in the round include Japan Energy Fund and Elemental Excelerator.

We last covered the 2020-founded startup when it closed an $11M Series A back in 2021 — explaining that its system uses CO₂ in a closed-loop cycle to store energy generated from renewable sources (such as solar).

Storage is important for renewables as major clean sources of energy generation like solar and wind power are variable, since the sun doesn’t always shine nor the wind always blow. This means, not that renewables are useless (as some right-wing politicians have tried to claim) but that decarbonizing the electricity grid using these alternative (green) sources of power requires innovation in storage tech — which is where Energy Dome is aiming to step in with its CO₂ Battery.

Its system works by changing the chemical compound, CO₂, from gas to liquid and back to gas (via compression and/or evaporation) in order to generate heat — which is either stored or used to drive a generator depending on whether the system is in charging or discharging mode.

The startup is named for an inflatable atmospheric gas holder filled with CO₂ (when in its gaseous form) which forms a core component of the storage system. Other key ‘ingredients’ for its battery are steel and water and Energy Dome touts the robustness of the system as a major differentiator vs alternative storage solutions, claiming no degradation over 30 years of operation.

It also claims the CO₂ Battery can store renewable energy with “75% RTE (AC-AC, MV-MV)” — meaning that for each unit of renewable energy stored the system is able to return 75% for later usage — doing so at a cost that it says is half the price of lithium batteries. (And mining for lithium raises environmental concerns in and of itself.)

Back in 2021 the startup was aiming to use the Series A funds to commercialize the tech. It’s made some progress on this front — saying it’s working with “several” utilities, independent power producers and corporate customers in key markets at this stage, per a press release, touting what it describes as “a qualified pipeline that exceeds 9GWh” in markets such as the U.S., Europe, South America, India and Australia.

The Series B funds will be used to enter what Energy Dome dubs “full commercial scaling mode on a global basis” — although it says it’s focusing on a set of key markets, with the US being principal among them (with an eye on tax incentives for green energy). 

“Our CO₂ Battery is ready for the market and, after closing the Series B round, we are ready to guarantee its performance to any customer that is real about getting rid of fossil fuels and substituting with dispatchable renewable energies,” noted founder and CEO Claudio Spadacini in a statement.

The startup added that it expects to have two standard 20MW-200MWh frames commercially operational by the end of 2024 — noting that the first unit already in the process of being manufactured.

Its focus now is on keeping up early momentum, having gone from starting operations to commercial-scale deployment in just three years, it also said. 

https://jac.yahoosandbox.com/1.7.2/safeframe.html

“The use of proceeds of the round will serve to provide financial guarantees to customers as a demonstration that this team is ready to put their ‘skin in the game’ alongside their customers in deploying the CO₂ Battery,” it added. “The investment will also support Energy Dome’s business expansion in the U.S. in order to leverage at maximum from the opportunities deriving from the Inflation Reduction Act and the associated Investment Tax Credits available for utility-scale energy storage.”

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/27/energy-dome-series-b/

February 16, 2023 07:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Xaba, developers of the first AI-driven robotics and CNC machine controller, today announced it has closed a round of seed funding to bring to market AI-driven fabrication processes and intelligent autonomous machines. The funding round was led by Hazelview Ventures with participation from Whiteshell Group Inc. The investment will be used to accelerate the development of two Xaba manufacturing platforms, launch pilot programs, and grow the team across sales, deployment, and customer support.

“For the first time, robots used in manufacturing will be able to consider all elements of execution in the process, which will ultimately reduce reliance on human supervision.”

The robotics market is changing rapidly and driving significant market interest in the adoption of intelligent, autonomous robotics systems and innovative new materials for use in manufacturing, transportation, and construction. In addition, companies are increasingly demanding intelligent robotic systems that are more accurate than those in use today and which can easily be applied to existing manufacturing operations. Xaba has taken an innovative approach to transform robots used in manufacturing today into fully intelligent, self-directed systems that can automatically optimize, adjust, or change the design flow to incorporate the various constraints typically found within mechanization.

“Xaba lowers the barriers to adopting new manufacturing technologies, materials, and approaches,” said Massimiliano Moruzzi, CEO of Xaba. “For the first time, robots used in manufacturing will be able to consider all elements of execution in the process, which will ultimately reduce reliance on human supervision.”

Xaba has two manufacturing platforms – xCognition and xTrude – which use proprietary, state of the art industrial artificial intelligence (AI) to provide consistency, robustness, persistently high execution quality, and autonomy. Its platforms eliminate the need for constant human supervision, reprogramming, and waste – factors that significantly impact the return on investment of any major manufacturing or construction process.

Xaba has partnered with leaders in the aerospace and automotive industries on disruptive projects in the U.S., Canada, and Europe to validate these manufacturing platforms with users. For Project Arrow, the all-Canadian electric vehicle, Xaba produced the world’s first 3D-printed chassis. This technology is also being used in the development of a flying car.

xCognition is Xaba’s AI-driven control system. This true industrial robotics digital twin captures and models the physics of industrial robotics systems (elastic, dynamic, mechanical, tooling), and enables any robotics system to execute tasks such as drilling, welding, assembling, riveting, laser, data acquisition, and more with maximum accuracy, repeatability, and minimum programming and human supervision.

xTrude is Xaba’s AI-driven control system for Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) processes, enabling the successful 3D printing of large functional parts while dramatically reducing failures such as de-lamination, collapse, and distortion. xTrude uses a machine learning model paired with a process control user interface to model the physics of an FDM process. It automatically computes optimum values for dominant process parameters such as flowrate, feedrate, extrusion temperature, bead width and height, and layer-to-layer adhesion temperature for every Numerical Control (NC) block along the entire printing trajectory.

Once available commercially, xCognition and xTrude will enable manufacturers to evaluate, adopt, and deploy intelligent automation in a much shorter time with a substantially higher throughput and increased sustainability.

“Xaba’s novel automation, manufacturing, and advanced materials technology is very compelling, such that we believe they can have a great impact on the construction industry,” said Roger Poirier, co-founder of Hazelview Ventures. “Consistent with our investment strategy, we are looking forward to working with Xaba to unlock the full potential of their technology as it relates to sustainable construction.”

Hazelview Ventures, a wholly owned subsidiary and venture arm of Hazelview Investments Inc., is a Toronto based Real Estate owner and developer that manages CAD$11.8 billion in real estate assets and has a $10.9 billion development pipeline. Hazelview Ventures focuses exclusively on partnering with innovative, early-stage PropTech, BuildTech, and CleanTech companies that can be leveraged throughout their real estate portfolio and development projects.

In recent years, increased automation capabilities and improved sustainability have become key objectives for the construction Industry. Xaba’s technology has the potential to significantly improve sustainability in all aspects of construction and development, including automation enabling prefabrication, waste reduction, and sustainable materials.

About Xaba

Toronto-based Xaba develops new processes, control systems, and materials that automate and enable sustainable manufacturing. Its intellectual property uses artificial intelligence (AI) to control industrial robots and enable additive manufacturing machines to synthesize new materials or create true digital twins. Such applications have the potential to disrupt current business models, determine new manufacturing processes, and create new materials. For additional information, visit xaba.ai.

Source: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230216005493/en/Xaba-Closes-Seed-Funding-to-Drive-Intelligent-Automation-for-Sustainable-Manufacturing

Contacts

Media:
Lisa Ballard
Boulevard Public Relations
lisa@boulevardpr.com

Today, we’ll get a glimpse of Canada’s home-built Project Arrow electric vehicle when the wrap is raised on a couple of corners of the car in Windsor. That’ll be it though, at the annual conference of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association (APMA). It will just be a tease for the cameras, and a showcase for the Canadian manufacturers whose parts make up the car.

The powertrain and electronics are not quite ready, but the final car is on schedule to be ready for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, says APMA President Flavio Volpe. It will then make the rounds of consumer shows and events across Canada in 2023.

“Every single item on the car was chosen with an eye to (being) commercially ready technology that you could sell to Toyota tomorrow, or Tesla tomorrow, or Mercedes-Benz,” he said. “It will be, I think, the most creative business card that we could have built for any of the companies that we represent.”

The APMA decided in 2019 to build a one-off electric car as a showcase for Canadian technology and expertise. The vehicle could not be too exotic – it had to represent an EV that might produce 50,000 vehicles a year, and would cost no more than $60,000.

A competition for the car’s design was won by a team from Carleton University’s School of Industrial Design in Ottawa. The APMA then invited Canadian companies to contribute their technology and from the 535 bids received, 58 were chosen for the vehicle.

One of those companies is Toronto-based Xaba, a startup that’s developed a composite polymer chassis, which can be created entirely with a 3D printer. Instead of the usual steel-and-aluminum chassis that underpins conventional vehicles and can include hundreds of parts, the Xaba chassis is made from a blend of ABS plastic and chopped carbon-fibre. Where needed for additional strength or support, a metal such as aluminum can be embedded into the plastic of the chassis that’s then printed around it. It’s produced in three parts – top, middle and bottom – that are simply bolted and glued together with a variance no more than a millimetre.

“We proposed to them that if you want to make an innovative car, it shouldn’t be done using metal,” said Max Moruzzi, chief executive officer of Xaba. “It should be done using a material that is much more sustainable in different aspects, not just from a cost point of view, because it doesn’t require any mining, but as well from a fabrication point of view, and as well from its functionality and performance.”

ABS plastic is similar to the plastic used for building Lego bricks, and it is considered a sustainable material because it can be chopped and ground up and reused for similar applications. It’s strengthened with about 20-per-cent carbon fibre, though not the same expensive material that’s used in exotic vehicles, so its cost is similar to a conventional metal alternative. Its total weight is about 300 kilograms, compared to around 500 kilograms for a metal chassis.

The Project Arrow chassis was printed in four days by a 3D printer in Italy using Xaba’s patented technology. The speed of printing can be increased with scale, and Moruzzi said the printer also uses a fraction of the energy needed to create a conventional chassis – about 33 kilowatts per hour, compared to at least 500 kilowatts for the metallic version.

“I worked with the rest of the APMA team, and some of the individuals they hired for this project are professionals from Aston Martin and McLaren,” Moruzzi said. “When I had to tell them that they had to redesign completely how they make the chassis, because a metallic chassis cannot work with a polymer, that was an interesting discussion, I can tell you.”

The Project Arrow EV will not be crash-tested to prove the strength of its build, but Volpe says that is unnecessary at this stage.

“The intelligent modelling now is so incredibly accurate that you don’t have to crash test, physically,” he said – it’s only when the vehicle is completely designed and ready for production that prototypes would be built for actual crashing, to prove the engineers correct.

“The two levels of government would like to see an automotive startup culture here – we have all the components, but we also have to be a little creative. You can’t ask an entrepreneur to take their first $20-million and throw it against the wall.”

The APMA received $5-million in federal funding for the development of the Project Arrow EV, as well as $1.8-million from the Ontario government and $1.4-million from the Quebec government. Volpe estimates that the cost of research provided by the various companies chosen to contribute to the car makes it a $20-million investment.

Moruzzi considers Xaba’s involvement to be time and money well spent. The company is already working on providing plastic printed materials for a flying car that’s being developed in Boston.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/drive/article-canadas-home-built-sustainable-ev-with-3d-printed-chassis-to-be-teased/

Augmenta Construction Platform enables contractors and engineers to design fully-detailed, code-compliant, and constructible designs in hours rather than weeks or months

TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Augmenta, the company automating building design for the construction industry, today announced it has emerged from stealth mode with US$4.1 million in seed funding to bring to market its design platform for the construction industry. The round was led by Hazelview Ventures with participation from Ferguson Ventures and Whiteshell Group Inc. The funds will be used to accelerate the development of the Augmenta Construction Platform (ACP); launch a pilot program for the Electrical System Design (ESD) module – the first of several solutions that have been built on Augmenta’s automated design platform; and grow the Augmenta team across sales, deployment, and customer support.

In the construction industry today, legacy tools and processes used for designing complex building systems like electrical, plumbing, and HVAC make it extremely difficult and time consuming to ensure designs are feasible for construction. Combined with time and resource pressures, this leads to errors that require significant rework, slowing down both design and construction and substantially increasing risk, uncertainty, and costs for contractors and engineers – and in turn real estate developers and owners. At a time when the industry faces talent and material shortages, and pressure mounts due to the inherent complexity of building design, Augmenta is providing innovative new technology to solve these challenges. Based on early customer trials, Augmenta is delivering enormous time and cost savings by bringing generative design to the construction industry. Through its technology platform, Augmenta is automating the entire design process for contractors and engineers, ensuring the designs they create are error-free, constructible, and optimized according to client needs, and created in hours instead of weeks.

Building designs produced using ACP are also sustainable. Since they are fully detailed, coordinated, and optimized, contractors can use less material in their designs, order only what they need, and significantly reduce wasteful errors and rework. Additionally, ACP optimizes building systems designs to ensure they use less energy and resources, thereby reducing environmental impact over the building’s life cycle.

“The construction industry continues to face major challenges due to manual design processes – and is ripe for disruption,” said Francesco Iorio, CEO and co-founder of Augmenta. “We are bringing a massive sea change to the industry by introducing technology that will make the transition from current manual design processes to generative design as fundamental as the shift from pen and paper to computers.”

Hazelview Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary and venture arm of Hazelview Investments Inc., focuses exclusively on partnering with innovative, early-stage PropTech, BuildTech, and CleanTech companies. Along with the seed investment, Hazelview Ventures is a strategic partner that will be incorporating the Augmenta platform in construction projects. This partnership will enable Augmenta to test, refine, and scale its platform at an enterprise level and bring efficiencies to Hazelview’s design and construction processes. Hazelview Investments manages CAD$11.6 billion in real estate assets and has a $4 billion development pipeline.

“Augmenta’s technology is a huge step forward for the construction industry and will help stakeholders achieve both cost savings and ESG benefits through waste reduction,” said Roger Poirier, co-founder of Hazelview Ventures. “We are excited to be partnered with such a ground-breaking company.” Concurrent with the investment in Augmenta, Poirier will join the Augmenta board of directors.

“We support innovation in the construction industry and invest in startups that enable significant productivity advancements to help our customers build better,” said Blake Luse, Managing Director at Ferguson Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Ferguson. “Augmenta’s approach in bringing Generative Design to the construction industry will drive efficiencies and help solve business challenges that our contractor customers are facing today. Ultimately, our investment in Augmenta will help skilled trade workers be more efficient on the jobsite and deliver environmental value by helping to reduce construction waste due to less jobsite rework.” Ferguson is a leading North American value-added distributor that provides expertise, solutions, and building supplies to plumbing, fire, HVAC, fabrication, and other trade professionals.

In preparation for the imminent launch of a pilot program for its first product – an automated design module for electrical engineers and contractors that generates fully constructible, code-compliant designs of electrical raceway routing – Augmenta has partnered with Interstates, an innovative electrical contractor based in the U.S. Interstates has helped co-design and test the electrical module over a period of several months in collaboration with Augmenta.

“In a very short period of time, we are seeing how dramatically Augmenta’s approach to automated design can reduce the cost of the design process,” said Josh Gillespie, BIM/VDC Director at Interstates. “It enables us to decrease the risk of inaccurately scoping time and cost estimates while drastically reducing the time it takes to complete estimates for bids. This gives us additional time to present fully considered design alternatives, thus positioning our company as a strategic partner to our clients, which include general contractors, engineering firms, developers, and owners.”

About Augmenta

Founded by the ex-Autodesk team that pioneered Generative Design, Augmenta is a software company that is driving a new level of efficiency for the construction industry by automating building design. The company’s flagship Augmenta Construction Platform (ACP) is being developed with a view to ensuring buildings are always designed to be energy efficient, use sustainable materials, are safer to build, and contribute less waste to landfill during construction. Once available commercially, this innovative new cloud-based platform – which uses artificial intelligence, including machine learning and mathematical optimization – will enable contractors and engineers to create error-free, constructible, code-compliant designs of buildings and systems in hours instead of weeks. For additional information, visit augmenta.ai.

Source: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220621005024/en/Augmenta-Emerges-from-Stealth-Mode-and-Raises-US4.1-Million-in-Seed-Funding-to-Automate-Building-Design-for-the-Construction-Industry

Energy Dome, a provider of utility-scale long-duration energy storage, has successfully launched its first CO2 Battery facility in Sardinia, Italy. This milestone marks the final de-risking of the CO2 Battery technology as Energy Dome enters the commercial scaling phase, becoming the first commercial long-duration energy storage technology on the market offering a reliable alternative to fossil fuels for dispatchable baseload power globally

The initial phase of operations has confirmed the performance of the CO2 Battery and its capability of storing energy for a long duration, all while maintaining highly competitive round-trip efficiency, without degradation or site dependency. The Sardinia demonstration project has proven this innovative process using off-the-shelf equipment available from a globally established supply chain, demonstrating that the rapid global deployment of the CO2 Battery is now possible with no bottlenecks.

“I am proud of our dedicated team and of our results. We can now provide an answer to the most pressing issue of our time: climate change,” said Energy Dome Founder and CEO Claudio Spadacini. “Our breakthrough technology, the CO2 Battery, is now commercially available to make cost-effective renewable energy dispatchable on a global scale.” 

Energy Dome’s CO2 Batteries can be quickly deployed anywhere in the world at less than half the cost of similar-sized lithium-ion battery storage facilities, and use readily available materials, such as carbon dioxide, steel and water. Energy Dome is now preparing for its first full-scale 20MW-200MWh plant. Its first commercial project, Commercial Operation Date, is expected to be deployed by the end of 2023.

Energy Dome began its operations in February 2020 and has progressed from a concept to full testing at multi-megawatt scale in just over two years. To achieve this, Energy Dome has tapped a team of experts in turbomachinery, process engineering and energy, with a proven track record in ventures designing novel turbines and building over 500MW of energy projects. This successful launch is also in part due to the unique nature of Energy Dome’s process, which integrates known components in a novel industrial process based on a thermodynamic transformation of CO2.

The company has already secured multiple commercial agreements, including with an Italian utility A2A for the construction of a first 20MW-5h facility. Earlier this year, Energy Dome also signed a non-exclusive license agreement with Ansaldo Energia, a major provider of power generation plants and components, to build long-duration energy storage projects in Italy, Germany, the Middle East and Africa.

Energy Dome’s plan is backed by investors including European deeptech venture capital firm 360 Capital, Barclays, Novum Capital Partners and Third Derivative. 

To fund the rapid commercial scale-up, Energy Dome plans to launch its Series B fundraising round for prospective investors interested in its groundbreaking energy storage technology.

Read the article here: https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/storage/energy-dome-launches-world-s-first-co2-20220608