Swiss-Mile, which is designing and constructing quadrupeds and enabling them with embodied AI, has rebranded to a brand new title: RIVR.
The Zurich, Switzerland-based firm makes a speciality of constructing bodily AI for last-mile supply, utilizing robots plus synthetic intelligence to boost effectivity and sustainability. As Swiss-Mile, it was recognized for its integration of synthetic neural networks into robots with wheels and legs.
RIVR mentioned its know-how addresses the rising demand for smarter and greener logistics options in city environments.
RIVR is hiring
The renamed firm has a dozen open positions, together with a senior product supervisor. RIVR has been filling a variety of management positions over the previous 12 months, together with hiring Razwan Ghafoor as head of product and Ben Simmen as head of income in the course of 2024.
Marko Bjelonic, co-founder and CEO of Swiss-Mile, mentioned he’s trying ahead to being extra concerned in operations and manufacturing. Bringing in skilled folks will allow him to focus extra on rising the enterprise, Bjelonic mentioned.
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Rebranding precedes area checks
The choice to rebrand an organization is rarely a straightforward one. The announcement adopted Swiss-Mile’s profitable $22 million seed spherical in August 2024, co-led by Jeff Bezos, govt chairman of Amazon, by way of Bezos Expeditions and HSG. The corporate mentioned on the time that the funding demonstrated the trade’s confidence in its imaginative and prescient and know-how.
With area testing scheduled to start this 12 months, RIVR plans to indicate how its improvements can rework some of the difficult and important points of e-commerce logistics. RIVR is presently closing one other funding spherical, aimed toward accelerating the event and deployment of its supply robots.
“It was time for an evolution of our model,” mentioned Bjeonic. “We’ve discovered product-market match and are actively working with main gamers within the logistics sector.”
“Swiss-Mile served us effectively after we had been a small crew rising from college, however our ambitions prolong far past,” he defined. “We goal to develop into one of many world’s main robotics firms, and for that imaginative and prescient, we’d like a reputation that may stand the check of time. RIVR carries a robust and deep which means—one that may evolve with us as we transfer from proof of idea to scaling to tons of of 1000’s of robots.”
The corporate is targeted on logistics purposes for its wheeled quadruped robotic. By equipping it with wheels, RIVR mentioned the cellular robotic can effectively transfer over lengthy distances utilizing its wheels, whereas additionally being able to traversing curbs, stairs and different obstacles utilizing legged locomotion as wanted. Its a novel kinematic design that solves lots of the challenges of last-mile supply, the corporate asserted.
“Working with main logistics carriers to deploy our robots for last-mile supply marks a big milestone in our mission to rework the house,” said Bjelonic.
He was just lately a visitor on The Robotic Report Podcast, the place he talked in regards to the evolution of the robotic.
