The round, led by Northern Gritstone, the investment business focused on science and technology businesses in the North of England, along with co-investors Finance Yorkshire and Praetura Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II, follows on from the appointment at the end of last year of Liz Upton, Co-Founder of Raspberry Pi, as Chair of BOW’s board.
The robotics market is expected to reach a value of around $260 billion by 2030, yet according to BOW the full potential of robotics is out of reach for most companies and independent developers because of the high cost and complexity of programming robots.
Programming currently requires the expertise of specialised roboticists, while applications developed successfully for one model of robot lack portability to different makes of robot, further slowing robotics innovation and adoption.
The BOW platform – which stands for “Bettering our Worlds” – and the BOW robot-agnostic software development kit (SDK) look to solve this industry bottleneck, making it possible for the first time to program different robots using the operating system and programming language of choice.
With BOW, any software developer can rapidly create and deploy robotics applications, easily port applications between different makes of robots and manage and orchestrate robot fleets.
According to BOW, by removing the need for highly specialised robotics programmers, its universal robotics platform allows generalist software developers to create, manage and deploy complex robotics applications and opens up valuable new use cases in sectors that have previously been underserved by robotics.
Robots running the BOW SDK benefit from ultra-fast communications and the platform’s AI capabilities.
Originally spun-out from the University of Sheffield in 2020, BOW is now working with Original Equipment Manufacturers, System Integrators and Software Development Houses who are using the platform and SDK to accelerate their robotics innovation and application development.
Nick Thompson, CEO of BOW said, “The robotics market is growing fast, but the world simply can’t afford to wait for robotics to standardise around a single operating system and coding language. BOW’s universal software platform and SDK elegantly solve this intractable problem by enabling any software developer to program various types of robots using the coding language of their choice, make portable applications and enable easy interoperability between any make and model of robot.”
“This investment is a defining moment for BOW. It not only validates our vision but also underscores the growing demand for cross-platform compatibility in robotics software. By simplifying robotics programming, we’re opening the door for all developers - not just roboticists - to shape the future of robotics. With BOW software, we’re enabling the 'there’s an app for that' revolution within the robotics industry,” said Daniel Camilleri, CTO and Founder of BOW.
