Dresden, Germany-based Wandelbots — a startup dedicated to making it easier for non-programmers to “teach” industrial robots how to do specific tasks — has raised a $30 million Series B funding round led by 83North, with participation from Next47 and Microsoft’s M12 venture funding arm.
Wandelbots will use the funding to help it speed the market debut of its TracePen, a hand-held, code-free device that allows human operators to quickly and easily demonstrate desired behavior for industrial robots to mimic. Programming robots to perform specific tasks typically requires massive amounts of code, as well as programmers with very specific, in-demand skill sets to accomplish. Wandelbots wants to make it as easy as simply showing a robot what it is you want it to do — and then showing it a different set of behaviors should you need to reprogram it to accomplish a new task or fill in for a different part of the assembly line.
