Realtime Robotics is a company has invented a solution for generating safe robot motion plans in micro-seconds, enabling robots to function in unstructured, collaborative work-spaces, reacting to other motions as soon as they are perceived. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Realtime Robotics CEO Peter Howard to learn more about the company.
Peter Howard’s Background
What is Peter Howard’s background? Howard said:
“I’m the President and CEO of Realtime Robotics, a Boston-based company focused on radically simplifying the deployment of industrial robotic systems. Previously, I founded and successfully grew four other companies, leading two to IPOs, one to strategic sale, and another to a strategic technology license.”
“Automation markets and the big suppliers of key technologies span the globe, and our senior leadership, including myself, spend a lot of time with key customers, partners, and investors in major centers like Germany, Japan, China, and the U.S. As CEO, my job is to hire the best, set direction and goals, and ensure we’ve got enough horsepower and gas in the tank to reach those goals.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Howard shared:
“Two computer science professors walk out of a grinding staff meeting, one focused in AI and robotics, the other in special purpose computer architectures. The architect asks the roboticist ‘after all these years, why do robots remain stubbornly in only a small handful of applications?’ The roboticist explains that figuring out how to move complex robots through the sort of crowded space that we live and work in without crashing into things turns out to be very difficult, requiring lots of time and expensive human programming, making them uneconomic for all but a few applications.”
“They decided to work together to see if they could break the back of this 40 year old unsolved problem. There were four technical co-founders of the company, the two professors, and two of their brightest students: Dan Sorin, George Konidaris, Sean Murray, and Will Floyd-Jones. A little over a year in, they had their breakthrough moment, and founded the company to build on the breakthrough and bring solutions to market that radically simplify programming and broaden the applications that robots can address economically.”
“I joined the team as an investor, experienced entrepreneur, and CEO. Though none of us lived in Boston at the time, we decided to locate there because it is a world leader in producing new robotics graduates, which feeds a nexus of robotics companies developing new products. It’s turned out to have been a great decision.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Howard reflected:
“Let me cheat a little here and offer two related memories: the first was arriving at the Automate trade show in 2019, hearing clusters of robot people asking each other if they’d seen ‘the holy grail in the back corner,’ then seeing the enormous crowd around our tiny little booth in that back corner demonstrating our instantaneous run-time planning and control system. The second was Will Floyd-Jones winning the IEEE award for most important new product in robotics last year (2024).”
Core Products
What are Realtime’s core products and features? Howard explained:
“Realtime Robotics has two distinct products, both built upon the same core engine. Our flagship product – Resolver – will be formally announced at Automate in May 2025, but has already been in use with several customers over the past year. It is a cloud-based product that enables users to simply place their robots, press a button, and improve productivity by reducing a workcell’s cycle time. It drastically reduces the time-consuming process of getting a work cell functional, taking it from days or weeks to a matter of minutes. Regardless of whether you have hours to work on the project – or need an answer overnight – customers can expect superhuman cycle times that might never be reached, even after thousands of hours of traditional programming methods.”
“Our second product, RapidPlan, is meant to run robots locally within the workcell. Rather than optimizing for perfect solutions, it optimizes for speed of planning. This makes it a potent tool for anyone developing a robotic solution to a dynamic problem. If you can see where the robot needs to go, RapidPlan can get the robot there and back incredibly fast, and without collisions.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your work sector recently? Howard acknowledged:
“Fundraising has been pretty challenging these past two years, a hangover from the exuberance around robotics in the years prior, and scarcity of great outcomes. We’ve placed a focus on products that have nearer-term horizons, and on working with strategic partners to help us mature our products more quickly, while supporting us with both investment dollars and channels to market.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since its launch? Howard noted:
“We started with an AI-driven technology that autonomously choreographs multiple robots, ensuring collision-free operation across brands. Our software delivered results in tens of milliseconds, enabling unprecedented speed and reliability.”
“Initially, our software excelled in delivering rapid, reliable results for dynamic operations. However, many of our most ambitious customers were designing extensive, static production lines where the priorities shifted. Instead of needing near-instantaneous results, these customers sought optimal solutions, even if the process took hours or days, which was an acceptable timeframe, given that these production lines often remain unchanged for years.”
“To meet this demand, we’ve developed a cloud-based system that goes beyond human capabilities. While RapidPlan completes in 50ms what a person might take hours to do, our cloud-based Resolver solution delivers superhuman results overnight. Powered by the same core engine, this advancement represents a significant leap in optimization and impact.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Howard cited:
“The ones that come quickly to mind are:
– Landing our first integration contracts and our seed round in 2017
– Completing our “holy grail” demonstration system in 2018
– Releasing our RapidPlan product and closing our Series A in 2019
– Hardening our RapidPlan product and getting it qualified for in-line production at Toyota, Schaeffler, and more by 2022
– Releasing our award-winning, industry-transforming Resolver product this year, which many in the industry believe will be seen as a critical tipping point for broader robotic deployment in years to come.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Howard highlighted:
“Yes – I’ll give you a couple. Recently, Valiant TMS used our solution to generate motion plans with more efficient motion paths, better interlocks, and a faster execution time, ultimately reducing a customer’s robot cycle time by 17% and cutting robot programming time in half. Here’s a video about it that goes into more detail. This might not sound like much, but as our tools are often used with the slowest parts of a major production line, the increase in capital efficiency of the whole production line might be as much as 20%, an enormous gain.”
“Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles in Hanover, Germany, used our solution in a proof-of-concept project for electric vehicle manufacturing. The company was looking to quickly and efficiently improve the cycle time in a 2-robot cell that was welding car doors for the ID. Buzz vehicle line. The solution’s recommendations helped the automotive manufacturer to incorporate improvements and reduce cycle time by several seconds.”
Revenue
When asking Howard about the company’s revenue details, he revealed:
“Since our start of operations in May 2017 to today, we have logged approximately $17 million in revenue, and we are targeting $9 million in revenue in 2025 with rapid growth to follow.
“Regarding fundraising history, we have raised a total of approximately $69M to date, and are considering plans to raise an additional $30 million in 2025 to accelerate growth.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Howard assessed:
“We find it useful to look separately at the existing industrial robotics market, which is focused mostly on automotive and electronics manufacturing on the one hand, and emerging sectors poised for rapid growth such as warehouse and logistics on the other.”
“Our products proactively address them both.”
“The existing industrial robotics market is generally estimated in the range of $60 billion per year, only a quarter of which is for the sale of robots themselves. The balance is spread between end of arm tools, engineering and design services, and system integration services. Estimates of the engineering and design services segment run in the range of $20 billion.”
“Our new Resolver product is in the process of transforming this market segment, offering 50% reductions in time to market and even higher reductions in labor cost.”
“Our other major product, RapidPlan, offers significant operating cost benefits to the owner/operators of the robotic systems in day-to-day operations in automotive factories. The addressable market of the inefficiencies which we can mitigate is in the single-digit billions.”
“On the emerging markets side, labor represents 60–65% of the total warehouse fulfillment cost. Increased adoption of industrial robots can lower this expense and increase productivity. In addition, globally companies spend an estimated $350 billion a year on warehousing – and are increasing their use of robotics to keep up with demand.”
“Because programming and integration account for up to 50-70% of the cost of a robot application, innovative approaches to automation and robotics are needed for there to be a real impact on the bottom line.”
“Those numbers alone show just how big the opportunity is for technologies that make the industrial automation process easier, faster, and help to drive a larger ROI.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Howard affirmed:
“In the industrial and manufacturing industry there is an expected shortage of 2.7 million jobs. Baby boomers are retiring and we need more tech specialists. To fill in the labor gap, companies need to embrace automation. This often means investing in more robots, but there is a growing need for companies to drive more out of these investments – improving efficiency to get a better ROI.”
“With that in mind, when it comes to competition, we are often competing with the status quo, or with internal company solutions and processes.”
“Our Resolver product is aimed at helping organizations break out of that status quo by eliminating a time-consuming, manual process that, because of its almost trial-and-error nature, isn’t even guaranteed to accomplish the goal of speeding automation and throughput.”
“Traditionally, the success of robot programming changes, tweaks to robot paths and other changes are not known until implementation. This creates a situation where work needs to be stopped for changes to be tried out. Many organizations don’t realize that there are better ways to investigate and test improvements to their workcells.”
“That is where Realtime and our Resolver solution can help. We can take their workcell information and calculate and test hundreds of thousands of different configurations and action plans until we land upon the most optimal solution. Then, it can be quickly implemented with minimal interruption. This is what makes us so different from the typical approach to solving the problem of workcell bottlenecks that slow production.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Howard concluded:
“On the evolutionary side of how you might intend this question, we are keenly focused this year and throughout 2025 on bringing our new Resolver solution to market, focusing first on the robotic line / system builders and their supporting engineering services suppliers, the $20 billion market segment mentioned earlier.”
“However, as we penetrate this segment by empowering these robotic system specialists to do much more, much more quickly, they will have bandwidth and we expect them to continuously take us into new markets hungry for automation, such as factory and warehouse logistics, railway, aerospace, construction, agriculture, and food services. Each of these segments have their own historical ways of doing things, which will require tweaks and optimizations to the toolkit we supply, to help the robotic system specialists meet their requirements squarely.”
“On the key-event side of how you might intend this question, we are now seven and a half years into our adventure, which means that some of our investors are at the lifetime limit of their funds and starting to need to look at liquidity options.”
“Ideally, in the coming few years we would like to get ourselves ready for an IPO to enable those who want or need to get out to do so profitably, but leave the option open to those who want to let their bets ride. Timing for IPOs, of course, requires a confluence of the company having achieved the requisite growth and promise, but also the market being hungry for the sector we are in, and favorable liquidity conditions, so it may be that we look toward private equity or strategics as the next step in the company’s journey.”
