Lucid Bots: The Unconventional Robotics Story
Andrew Ashur, the founder and CEO of Lucid Bots, often humorously remarks that his company is currently the antithesis of the robotics industry. In an era when many companies strive to build humanoid robots and showcase their robots’ acrobatic abilities, Lucid Bots has adopted a different approach. The drones developed by this North Carolina-based startup are designed to carry out the less glamorous and often hazardous task of cleaning windows, making the process safer and more efficient.
“The sad truth is that most are still selling a lot of hype and headlines, and we are selling jobsite performance that is reflected in our customers, our profits, and our losses,” Ashur told TechCrunch. “We’re not just in the lab and the simulators. We’ve got dirt under our fingernails and we’re out on the job sites getting the job done.”
Lucid Bots: A Full-Stack Robotics Company
Lucid Bots is a full-stack robotics company that designs and manufactures its own robots in the United States. Its Sherpa drones and Lavo robot are sold to cleaning companies to assist them on their job sites. Recently, the company raised a $20 million Series B funding round co-led by Cubit Capital and Idea Fund Partners, bringing its total funding to $34 million.
The funding will be used to meet the increasing demand for their products, although Ashur jokingly mentioned the lack of parking spaces at their manufacturing plant. “We have more requests for demonstrations than hours in the day, so we need to increase our capacity and staffing,” Ashur added. “As a founder, when we don’t have enough hours in the day to do all the demos, it gives me a bit of heartburn.”
The Journey of Lucid Bots
Initially, the idea of Lucid Bots did not attract much attention from customers or investors. The company spent half a decade to ship its first 100 robots. Ashur, with a liberal arts background and no robotics experience, faced a tough time convincing venture capitalists to back his idea.
The concept originated when Ashur was still a student at Davidson College, studying economics and Spanish. He witnessed a near-accident involving window cleaners on a windy day, stirring his thoughts about how technology could make such tasks safer.
“Built infrastructure is literally the largest asset class in the world, but right now we face these three compounding problems,” Ashur said. “We have aging infrastructure, the new infrastructure we’re building is getting bigger and harder to maintain and, last but not least, we have fewer and fewer people willing and able to do the work. We needed to start building drones and robots to close that gap.”
Lucid Bots: The Future
Lucid Bots launched in 2018 and initially took on contract jobs to better understand the industry. After two years and a few chemical burns, Ashur felt confident about what his drone needed to succeed. The company has recently seen a surge in sales, approaching 1,000 units sold after taking five years to sell the first 100.
Lucid Bots continues to refine its products based on the data collected from its robots. The company is also developing a tool to enable its robots to carry out adjacent tasks like painting and waterproofing. “We recently waterproofed a huge university stadium that was starting to age, still using the same brain and structure as a Sherpa,” Ashur said. “Part of the reason we went there is because we were attracted to it by our existing customers and we were getting, probably about 50 inbound leads a month related to painting and coating and that was before we even started marketing that option.”
For more information about Lucid Bots and their innovative approach to robotics, click here.
