This is an exciting time for us at Intuition Robotics. We would like to share a status update on where we are in 3 main topics. 1. Our progress from a prototype to a product. 2. User trials. 3. Funding
In January we unveiled our first prototype at the Design Museum in London, and were overwhelmed by the positive feedback - THANK YOU. Since then we've been working tirelessly on redesigning the prototype to a product that we can manufacture at scale, with high quality and a wonderful user experience, while keeping true to the original design. This process, referred to as DFx (design for: manufacturing, quality, etc) is finally over. We're thankful to all the wonderful partners that have helped us redesign the product to meet our specs. The motors are now silent and smooth (thanks Toyota for the help!) and we plan to open source the design, the speakers have gone through an upgrade (with a top brand that we can't name yet), the electronics are all our own, and the overall esthetic is the same. Last week we assembled the first new prototype based on the re-design, and are now beginning to test it.
From day 1 of the company we've been working with older adults and their families. Over the last few months we've been using the prototypes to test usability of our new interaction models and unique interfaces of ElliQ with older adults in the Bay Area. I'd like to thank the many people that have signed up to our testing, the independent living facilities, communities and CCRCs that have agreed to help us. Without you - we'd be nowhere! Soon we'll move to deeper testing we call "Value Proposition" testing, to test the value ElliQ has on people's lives.
As many of you have seen, we recently announced our series A round, led by Toyota AI Ventures (and Toyota Research Institute) and participated by iRobot, OurCrowd, and existing investors from the US and Israel. I'd like to update that since that announcement we've been honored to welcome a new investor from China, Glory Ventures, who have proven to be a strong partner to the team as we started working in China over the last year. This brings our total funding to date to 17M USD.
We'll continue updating you as we make progress.
Itai, Roy and Dor