Construction robotics startup Sitegeist raises €4M to automate arduous concrete repair jobs – News

German startup Sitegeist GmbH said today it has raised €4 million (about $4.75 million) in pre-seed funding to help accelerate the renovation of Europe’s infrastructure with robotic automation.

Today’s round was led by b2venture and OpenOcean and saw participation from UnternehmerTUM Funding for Innovators and several angel investors, plus strategic partners in the construction and robotics industries.

Sitegeist’s non-humanoid robots are focused on one of the more dramatic yet necessary challenges of renovation projects: demolition. To be more specific, they’re designed to remove deteriorated concrete from existing structures up to 10 times faster than humans can do, helping to accelerate renovation projects and overcome a growing labor shortage in the construction industry.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Dr Lena-Marie Pätzmann (pictured below, second from right) says there’s an urgent need for robotic assistance in the construction industry. Across Europe, there are hundreds, if not thousands of aging bridges, tunnels, parking facilities and public buildings in need of urgent renovation.

In Germany, the repair backlog amounts to hundreds of billions of euros, and there are similar challenges in other European countries and in the U.S. and other parts of the world. Most countries cannot keep up, owing to a shortage of skilled laborers and the physically demanding nature of the work.

The task of concrete renovation is especially complex. Crumbling concrete is normally removed using high-pressure water or abrasive blasting machines, which are operated by humans and require extreme precision to avoid damaging the steel reinforcement used within it. The process is slow and complicated by the fact that it’s often site-specific, which means there’s a huge backlog of work that needs to be done.

“Infrastructure renovation is hitting a critical bottleneck, especially in concrete repair,” Pätzmann said. “Today, deteriorated concrete is still removed using manually-intensive processes that are hard to scale.

Pätzmann believes the solution is robotic automation. Her company has created a modular robot that’s designed to operate in unstructured construction environments. Unlike existing robots that are programmed to operate in standardized environments, its robots can operate in any construction site.

They navigate their environment through a combination of advanced sensors, artificial intelligence-based decision support and adaptive control systems, allowing them to handle complex geometries without site-specific training, meaning they can be deployed quickly to almost any site. They’re also extremely durable, which is necessary to handle the worst of Europe’s winter weather conditions.

“We’re tackling this challenge with the first ever specialized automated and modular robots that can perform concrete renovation directly on existing structures,” Pätzmann said. “This backing enables us to move faster in bringing automated renovation to critical infrastructure worldwide.”

Sitegeist isn’t alone in trying to speed up construction timelines with robotic automation. In Europe alone, there are many rival robotics firms, including RobCo., Brokk AB, Epiroc AB and Husqvarna AB. But Pätzmann said Sitegeist’s robots are the only ones capable of performing large-scale concrete renovation with full autonomy.

“For our first use case – concrete removal – we differentiate ourselves through two core features: automated, sensor-based concrete removal, and the ability to work not only on large, straight surfaces but also in open areas, corners, columns, and similar spaces, where much of the work occurs,” she explained.

The startup is already working alongside a number of German concrete renovation firms, and the funding will allow it to expand its collaborations and deploy its robots on additional test sites and hire new talent to further enhance their design.

OpenOcean Partner Sam Hields said the most impactful AI-powered robots in use today are not humanoids with fingers and thumbs, but rather, those that are purpose-built to solve real-world problems. “Sitegeist’s non-humanoid robots and their ability to operate in harsh environments with superhuman strength and autonomy is genuinely game-changing,” he said. “This is exactly the kind of task we want AI to automate: a manual, expensive process with low talent availability. With an aging population and a skills shortage in physical industries like construction, robotics will help us refit our infrastructure for the future.”

Sitegeist is focused on concrete renovation for now, but ultimately it believes robots will be able to assume dozens of different tasks in the construction industry, including sandblasting and drilling.

Photos: Sitegeist