Hardware is complex but wheel.me makes autonomous robots reliable, scalable and genius

The wheel, a circular device, has been pivotal in advancing human progress through innovation. However, if you ever wondered how the wheel can evolve in the 21st century then this Norwegian startup might have the answer. Founded by Rolf Libakken and Atle Tiemenes in 2013, wheel.me has been around for more than a decade but the startup is reimagining the role of a wheel in our ever-so-mechanical world.

Since its founding, the vision of wheel.me has been to find an easy and accessible way into automation. “Our vision is to transform any object into an autonomous mobile robot,” the startup says on its website. The idea for wheel.me came when Libakken had to help friends and family move heavy furniture repeatedly.

This personal help transformed into a product, a pop-up wheel that can be integrated into the legs of furniture. However, the idea didn’t stop there and turned into a vision that grew from moving furniture to moving anything with motorisation and smart autonomous behaviour. With Pål Rødseth as CEO, Svein Andreassen as CFO, Kjell Ivar as COO, Hanna B. Søberg as CPO, Mia Norman as VP of Engineering and Daniel Hjørnevik as Product Manager, the startup is transforming how we look at wheel and is becoming the automation startup to watch in Europe.

Hardware is complex

It is a well-known fact that building hardware is complex and for the wheel.me team, it wasn’t easy. Anmol Kandroo, DevOps Manager at wheel.me says the biggest challenge was to create a seamless hardware/software solution that’s both user-friendly and easily deployable. He adds that once the product was developed, it required extensive dedication and effort to meet customer expectations for safety and industrial compliance. “We have the highest safety standards for our solution,” quips Kandroo.

Today, more than 30 major customers use wheel.me’s robotic platform on different scales in America and Europe. The startup has also started gaining traction in other parts of the globe including Japan. Its rise mainly stems from its focus on collaborating with its key clients to develop a product that meets the industrial requirements.

Genius 1, the first-generation robot from the company, was the fruit of extensive collaboration and feedback. However, that collaboration led to more learning and they incorporated those necessary enhancements and compliance specifications into the design and development of its second-generation robot, called Genius, which debuted in Q4 2023.

Despite the success seen with improving its primary product, Kandroo says the company had to learn and unlearn a lot of things to make its product work for different customers. “For example, in an industrial manufacturing use case that operates 24/7, even though it looks very similar to existing use cases at first glance, we had a steep learning curve on hidden challenges like factory floor debris, complicated traffic areas, or dynamic environments that change every day,” explains Kandroo.

During the continuous process of deployment and enhancement, the startup also learned that they could manage a lot by improving their technology. One thing that cannot be overlooked is the “committed team on the factory floor, a clean environment, or small adjustments to the process that can make a huge difference in the long run.”

Meet Genius: Combination of robotics and AI

Genius is a set of 4 or 8 robots (or robotic wheels) that replace a standard set of caster wheels. The company explains the main wheel includes a set of sensors and a computer to navigate in the indoor environment and the combined system is used to transport things. This robot is further connected to a backend, which is hosted on the AWS cloud with serverless architecture.

“We leverage the AWS IoT services to manage the fleet of robots through a centralised application that allows us to collect data, create centralised maps, define missions and upgrade robots with the latest software upgrades in scale,” explains Kandroo.

He adds that automotive manufacturing is the largest customer for wheel.me right now since the technology offers a unique opportunity for automation by retrofitting existing processes with its wheels. “That allows them to scale up automation at their own speed without interrupting and redesigning their production,” he quips.

With robotics comes AI and the startup is currently leveraging AI at multiple levels like data stack for object recognition, smarter navigation, path planning, and predictive maintenance. However, like many other AI-driven startups, the wheel.me team also sees their use of AI as a start and envisions the technology playing a major role in bringing its robots to the next level.

AWS for scale and innovation

For its aforementioned cloud backend, wheel.me relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the startup says it is mainly because of its ease of use, affordability, scalability, and data privacy benefits. Kandroo says AWS helps them by providing a scalable infrastructure that is cost-effective, reliable, and flexible while also offering global reach and access to advanced technologies.

With AWS, he says wheel.me can focus on innovation and delivering value to its customers without worrying about infrastructure or operations. The startup also sees AWS as an ideal partner to support its expansion and development roadmap. “AWS offers many features and services in high scale and speed globally, making our own expansion and development easier, faster, flexible and reliable to adjust.”

With AWS, the wheel.me team says they are able to deploy faster and more reliably and since it is a small tech startup, Kandroo says AWS is great to work with and offers many opportunities and stability in the future.

Expansion on the cards

Wheel.me is a team of approximately 87 people and the startup is expanding its team, both in the US and Norway. The robotics startup is currently hiring for multiple roles across different departments like management, engineering, IT, and support.

While the team grows in the US and Europe, wheel.me is also looking to expand its operations by following the footprint of its global customers, who are expanding to Asia. With a business model that offers customers an option to purchase its solution, including the service and software platform, wheel.me is also offering a Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) model.

With its last funding round, wheel.me has built an automated factory in Norway where robots can build robots and is now focusing on enhancing capabilities across talent, hardware and the tech involved in building these robots.

The technological as well as operational growth of wheel.me in the past year alone is astounding. The startup has built a clever team that is pairing robotics with AI and ingenuity to bring autonomous robots to the automotive industry and other businesses. It will be interesting to see whether the startup becomes a genius like its product name in the coming years.