On November 14th, 2017, soft robotics startup Somnox launched its Kickstarter campaign to launch the world’s first sleep robot. And now, one month later, Somnox has raised a total amount of €200.274 from 509 backers, doubling its initial goal. Due to this success, Somnox will start production, aiming to help 100.000 people achieve a good night’s rest in 2025. We talked to Julian Jagtenberg, founder of Dutch startup Somnox, on how his project came to life.
The early beginnings
The company didn’t actually start as a startup. Jagtenberg: “Somnox is basically a school project that got totally out of hand. It started as a soft robotics project during my studies at the Technical University of Delft. It was my aim to create a huggable companion robot to fight insomnia. I already had known about the problem for some time, because some of my own friends and family members had told me about it. At the time, you could only combat insomnia with medical treatment, so I wanted to provide an alternative. ”