Inside Pittsburgh Tech explores the products coming out of Pittsburgh that will change the world.
You might not find it unusual as you’re walking through Greater Pittsburgh International Airport to see a worker getting ready to clean the floor. With thousands of people passing through the facility daily, dirt is bound to happen and it needs to be cleaned up.
If an automated cleaner sped by you doing the job, though, it might make you take notice.
Lawrenceville-based Thoro.ai is creating the technology that makes these autonomous cleaning vehicles possible. (The technology industry deems a product autonomous if it doesn’t require a human to operate it in its normal activities).
Spun out of Carnegie Robotics in 2020 with the help of Denmark-based industrial cleaning company Nilfisk, Thoro.ai has become an important part of the movement toward safe, autonomous vehicles.
Cleaning was the first application for Thoro.ai and represented a distinct way for a startup to team up with a company that had been operating for more than a century. As traditional industrial cleaning suppliers like Nilfisk were moving toward manpower-less products, Thoro.ai’s components were the perfect complement.
With clients throughout the world, Nilfisk turned to Thoro.ai to incorporate sensors, software and supporting systems into the older company’s products, creating autonomous devices.
Looking like a mini-Zamboni, these new devices could roam through schools, airports and other facilities to take care of cleaning tasks any time of the day. The devices hit the market during the pandemic while everybody’s mind was thinking about how to better clean environments without introducing new people and their germs. And they fit an age-old goal of doing chores that people don’t like to do.
Emphasis on safety
According to Thoro.ai CEO Patrick Mondi, the key to the company’s success is its emphasis on safety.
Thoro.ai’s approach is to assume that its products will be used when people are nearby. The sensors and reactions of the products using their components recognize when there’s a person around and react promptly to make sure that the person doesn’t get hurt. That allows these advanced devices to operate around the clock, not just after people disappear from the scene.
Mondi’s background included strategic initiative positions at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, which worked on autonomous vehicles, as well as positions at other companies in supply chain and intellectual property law. When he arrived at Thoro.ai, he promptly set the direction to include partnering with leaders in industries that could utilize Thoro.ai technology.
The company has since partnered with Big Joe, a company that makes forklifts and other material-handling equipment. With Thoro.ai’s technology built into their products, Big Joe can provide factories and distribution centers with autonomous devices that can act like traditional forklifts and carry pallets of goods between locations in a warehouse – even when on separate floors.
In the material-handling application, safety is again important because it allows operation when shifts of workers are in action, instead of having to wait until the factory floor or distribution center clears out of people between work shifts.
Mondi based his decision to enter this industrial market citing high personnel turnover statistics in the industry, which according to Mondi, is 22% annually in shipping departments.
He says that his products “make work more rewarding and productive for workers through the application of robotics in industrial environments” by removing activities that are less desirable for a person to do.
Dozens of specialists
Thoro.ai’s main operation is in a converted industrial building not far from the Allegheny River where about two dozen employees explore problems that plague their industrial clients. The goal is to integrate Thoro.ai’s products into clients’ products, a relationship called OEM (or original equipment manufacturing) by the industry.
To form these OEM relationships, engineers are creating modules and sensors that see the world and can respond in real time by sending signals to other parts of the product to stop, turn or take other appropriate actions. It uses a combination of vision (LiDAR and cameras), hardware and software.
By teaming with large industrial companies with broad distribution networks and years of experience, Thoro.ai can offer its technical expertise and gain well-positioned partners to help them grow.
Know of a product or service being developed in Pittsburgh or by a Pittsburgh-based company that is cool, is creating growth or will change the world? Let David know via email.