SR Robotics (SRR), a Katowice-based firm specialising in underwater robotics, has secured over €8.4 million in capital from a fund managed by Vinci, an organization from the Financial institution Gospodarstwa Krajowego Group.
This marks the profitable completion of SRR’s strategic investor search.
“Our aim is to form the way forward for underwater know-how. We’re creating modern merchandise, and, in chosen areas, we provide options with a singular aggressive benefit and a beautiful RaaS enterprise mannequin,” says Tomasz Hartwig, CEO and Co-founder of SR Robotics. “Due to Vinci’s assist, we are able to enhance the dimensions of our operations and the supply of companies in a subscription mannequin.”
Based in 2017, SRR operates in two most important areas: the event of remotely operated and autonomous underwater robots, and environmentally pleasant ship hull cleansing companies.
The corporate develops dual-use robots for the civil and defence sectors, enabling the detection and neutralisation of unexploded ordnance (UXO) and chemical weapons, in addition to seabed mapping and the safeguarding of each essential underwater infrastructure and strategic ports.
As a part of the service providing, clients obtain an appropriately configured robotic and full operator assist, in addition to distant diagnostics, monitoring, and upkeep. This seems to be to remove the necessity for capital funding in buying robots or servicing prices.
The SR Robotics portfolio additionally consists of: the Crab Backside Crawler, the Octopus ROV, the ASV Narwal, the Nautilus ROV and the MagRob CL, and MagRob AC.
Certainly one of SRR’s key differentiators is the usage of synthetic intelligence to assist underwater operations – together with techniques for analysing sensor information and figuring out submerged objects. This know-how might show essential to the offshore sector, together with offshore wind farms, and to strengthening the nation’s power safety.
One other key space of SRR’s actions is the design and manufacture of magnetic robots for cleansing ship hulls and different hard-to-reach underwater surfaces. SRR plans to regularly deploy its hull cleansing service, beginning with Poland’s most important ports, after which increasing to key European harbours. This initiative helps each the ecological sustainability of maritime transport and the safety of native marine ecosystems, in keeping with EU environmental laws.
SRR can be serving to to develop Polish experience in underwater robotics via academic actions performed in collaboration with the Maritime Economic system Vocational Coaching Centre in Szczecin, the Maritime College in Gdynia, and the Silesian College of Know-how.
“Investing in SR Robotics is about extra than simply supporting technological improvement; it’s additionally about constructing nationwide competence in defending essential underwater infrastructure, akin to cables and pipelines. Moreover, it’s an funding within the safety of strategic information for the Polish maritime space, together with any infrastructure developed there, akin to wind farms,” factors out Bartosz Drabikowski, CEO Vinci S.A. “We recognise the corporate’s super potential as a frontrunner in underwater robotics, with its market-ready product portfolio and a clearly outlined commercialisation technique.”
In keeping with information supplied by SR Robotics, maritime transport is a crucial a part of the worldwide economic system, accounting for 90% of worldwide commerce in items, whereas producing round 3% of world greenhouse fuel emissions.
SRR’s know-how due to this fact goals to resolve an financial drawback and one associated to invasive organisms attaching themselves to ships hulls. Gas prices account for round 60% of the full price of maritime freight, and microflora on ship hulls trigger a median enhance in gasoline consumption of as much as 10%.
In opposition to the backdrop of the lately launched CO₂ prices (ETS) in maritime transport, SRR’s resolution takes on added significance.
In keeping with the corporate, their underwater automobiles can conduct geophysical and ferromagnetic surveys for offshore investments in all climate circumstances. SRR robots can survey the seabed visually, together with conducting underwater inspections in areas which are troublesome or unimaginable for people to entry.
They will reporteedly carry out harmful duties that may in any other case put divers susceptible to damage or dying and assist them in extra work. With use of sonar know-how, underwater objects, together with hydrotechnical infrastructure, might be monitored even in poor visibility.
“The BGK Group’s funding in SR Robotics is totally aligned with BGK’s 2025–2030 technique, one of many pillars of which is offering each banking and fairness assist for the event of cutting-edge applied sciences, together with these utilized inside our nationwide protection sector. The twin-use know-how supplied by SR Robotics is not only about gaining a market edge – additionally it is a matter of nationwide safety. Poland wants dependable suppliers of underwater applied sciences, as a result of this serves our nation’s very important pursuits,” says Mirosław Czekaj, President of Financial institution Gospodarstwa Krajowego.
This ties into current issues over Russian interference with underwater cables, with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk lately accusing Russia of utilizing darkish fleet tankers to break undersea infrastructure, as reported by LLoyd’s List.
The capital raised on this spherical might be used to broaden the corporate’s manufacturing capability, enhance the supply of its robotic fleet underneath the Robotic-as-a-Service (RaaS) mannequin, construct a Distant Operations and Evaluation Centre, and set up a coaching centre for unmanned underwater car operators.
The funding can even assist the event of native Polish experience in servicing offshore wind farm infrastructure.
