How two Sri Lankans are building a robotic cloud in Switzerland and Japan

The robot from Laputa, the Studio Ghibli island in the sky, and inspiration for Rapyuta’s name.

As the robotics industry gains steam, one question is looming large: how do you make and where do you put robot brains? The hardware of robotics is the obvious challenge, but without the right software a robot is a lifeless hunk of metal. And without an internet connection, even the best software is little more than a definition of the machine’s limits rather than its possibilities. That is why leading tech companies in Japan like Yahoo Japan and SoftBank are creating cloud infrastructure for robotics software. They might be giants, but that has not deterred Rapyuta Robotics, a Japan-Switzerland startup from joining the race.

Dr. Gajamohan Mohanarajah (CEO) and Arudchelvan Krishnamoorthy (COO), two long-time friends from Sri Lanka who studied abroad together at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, co-founded the startup. Rapyuta Robotics – named after the robots featured in a famous Hayao Miyazaki film – aims to create a cloud infrastructure that will allow all robots connected to it to share each others experiences. This reduces the amount of programming that needs to go into the robot initially and means that all connected robots should get progressively more adaptable.

Proving this concept is a heavy challenge. Rapyuta Robotics’ engineering team is developing the robot-based and cloud-based code from scratch. It’s a no-shortcuts approach and it is getting ready to hit the market.

Entering via drones

The first product Rapyuta Robotics is looking to roll out is drones for security and infrastructure inspections. Surveying parking lots and private property is an obvious application of drone technology, but Rapyuta Robotics feels that the infrastructure market is just as promising.

Bridges, tunnels, and other major structures need to be regularly examined. Careful review can be dangerous work, which is why Rapyuta Robotics is programming its drones to carry out the inspections. They fly close to the structure, take pictures, and can access the cloud to compare the current snapshot to previous ones taken in the same location.

Getting pictures taken from the exact same spot, close enough to a large object that one wrong move can impair the drone is too difficult for humans. Rapyuta Robotics’ drones can be programmed to carry everything out autonomously.

That’s also possible indoors. “Everyone flies drones outside because it is easy to get the GPS signals and get the positioning. But, when it comes to indoors, you are not going to get the signal, you need to create a virtual GPS field. Our speciality is that we can create that field for a really cheap price,” Krishnamoorthy explains.

Though drones are the company’s first product, Krishnamoorthy stresses that Rapyuta Robotics is much more. “For now we are focusing on drones, but we are a robot company. Right now we are using flying robots,” he says.

Rapyuta says its technology will make its drones better than out of the box alternatives.

Funding a dream team