5D Robotics Raises $5.5M to Commercialize Technology for Vehicles

Carlsbad, CA-based 5D Robotics said it has raised $5.5 million in a seed round from private investors to accelerate the commercial development of its automation technology in such sectors as industrial heavy equipment, mapping, and inspection. The investors were not identified.

5D Robotics, not to be confused with Berkeley, CA-based 3D Robotics, was founded in 2009 by CEO David Bruemmer and colleagues from the Idaho National Laboratory. Until now, the company has funded its operations through government contracts, although Bruemmer said founders, friends, family, have provided some funding, along with angel investors.

5D specializes in automation technology for vehicles, saying its “innovative software supports navigation, mapping and localization, search and detection, and dexterous mobile manipulation and various other robot behaviors for unmanned ground and air vehicles.”

The company says it has developed a commercial module that can be easily installed and reconfigured to bring robotics innovations to forklifts, scissor-lifts, and other industrial equipment to automate operations and increase safety and efficiency. In a statement earlier this week, the company said, “5D solves position and navigation down to the centimeter level, allowing vehicles to park side by side, indoors, outdoors, and in the snow, fog, or rain.”

In an e-mail, Bruemmer added, “The same modules we are developing for those vehicles are also now going onto automotive, drones, and low-speed electric vehicles.”

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.