Investment fund Grishin Robotics in New York announced Friday it invested $250,000 in Double Robotics, a Mountain View, CA-based maker of mobile, robotic stands for Apple iPads. This is Grishin’s first investment after being founded in June by Mail.ru’s CEO Dmitry Grishin, who plans to back new innovations in robotics across the U.S.
Double Robotics, founded in 2011 and a graduate of this year’s Y Combinator accelerator summer class, makes wheeled stands that can be mounted with iPads, supplied by the users, for video chatting purposes. Each robot can be controlled and steered via another iPad from anywhere in the world, allowing users to have virtual face-to-face conversations through the tablets’ video cameras and displays.
The funding from Grishin is slated to be spent on new hires, product development, and scaling up manufacturing. Robots built by Double Robotics can be used as remotely guided cameras for security surveillance, teleconferencing, and other video monitoring needs.
