Cleaning the outside of a building is a dirty job and can also be dangerous. Lucid Bots debuted in 2018 with his Sherpa series of high-altitude window cleaning drones, but now they're back to take on more labor-intensive tasks.
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company is part of Y Combinator's 2019 companies of the year, with a theme of building intelligent robots to tackle the “dirty” jobs that humans don't do. It has taken on a new form. Ashur said he wanted to do it.
“We started with a very simple problem, but after years of pursuing our desire to make dangerous jobs safer, the real problems we are solving are: , the fundamental fact is that people don't want to do jobs that are perceived as boring, dirty, 'dangerous or humiliating,' Andrew Ashur, founder and CEO of Lucid Bots, told TechCrunch.
Customers also kept asking the company if its drones were capable of cleaning building facades, windows, and roofs, as well as flat surfaces like sidewalks and driveways.
“We had the opposite problem of people saying, 'If you build this, we'll pay for you,'” Ashour said. “As you can imagine for flying objects, flat surfaces and gravity are not favorable.”
Creating a robot that could do that was actually easier than Ashur expected. Lucid Bots had a common frame and a common brain among robots. All that was missing was connecting different tools and payloads to the robot so that it could perform different tasks. Well, then some wheels. This is a robot that can clean flat surfaces. This is a high pressure cleaning robot called Lavo Bot.
Drones are an industry that some major companies are entering. Amazon has a solid fleet of delivery drones, even though it no longer makes deliveries in California. Google and DoorDash also tried to get into this. Drones are also used for aerospace and military purposes. In addition to Lucid Bots, lesser-known companies like Apellix, Prichard Industries, and KTV also have cleaning drones. Ashur's goal is not necessarily to compete with the likes of Amazon and focus on delivery, but rather to “build frontier technology for an old-school industry,” he said.
Ashur believes Lucid Bots' advantage is that cleaning drones can fly within regulations in urban and suburban environments, spaces where delivery drones currently cannot even be tested. he said.
Last year, Lucid Bots ran a proof of concept in which a customer paid for two delivery drones of a certain size. One delivery drone has a payload of 20 pounds and can fly autonomously for 10 kilometers. Lucid Bots looked at their core technology stack and product strategy and realized they could make it happen within a month. In fact, the company ultimately completed it in four days, Ashur said.
“We're kind of an outlier in the world of robotics,” Ashur says. “We are generating meaningful revenue. We have grown over the years. We are also developing a very unique program that shows how we can fly in environments where most drones cannot currently fly. You also have access to datasets, which creates a lot of value in the long term.”
Meanwhile, Lucid Bots' 2023 revenue will be just over $3.5 million, and Ashour said the company has “grown exponentially over the past three years, and we intend to stay that way for as long as possible.” .
The company now wants to evolve its autonomous robotics portfolio, expand its business, and leverage its AI-driven software and sensor platform to expand into new markets. It's doing just that with $9.1 million in new Series A funding.
Ashur said it's “very interesting” to try to raise money, especially for a frontier technology company based in Charlotte. There were often disagreements among investors who did not understand the space and vision Lucid Bots was pursuing. That was not the case with Qubit Capital, he said.
Cubit Capital led the round, with participation from Idea Fund Partners, Danu Venture Group, and existing investors including Y Combinator's Growth Fund and Gratus Capital.
Philip Carson of Cubit Capital said in a written statement that Lucid Bots was able to bring the product to market quickly and cost-consciously, something “unprecedented in the cleaning robot industry.”
“Lucid Bots has pioneered a model where it is cheaper to manufacture drones domestically than it is to ship them from overseas manufacturers,” Carson said. “These differentiated capabilities, combined with strong revenue growth and a proven team, give us tremendous confidence in their ability to win in this exciting growth market.”