Clearpath Robotics, Inc. was founded in 2009 by a group of four University of Waterloo graduates and is still headquartered in Waterloo Region , Canada. Clearpath’s original goal was to facilitate field robotics research for universities and private corporations, but the company has since expanded and now also manufactures and sells an OT line of unmanned TO vehicles for industrial enterprises.
History
Clearpath Robotics was founded in 2009 due to the growing demand for environmental monitoring equipment and robotic research equipment. Unlike other robotics startups, they raised only a small amount of angel investment at inception and sought to achieve profitability before raising more.
In 2012, a company was formed to ensure the continuity of work done with ROS, Clearpath CTO Ryan Gariepy joined the founding board. Shortly thereafter, the original creator of ROS, Willow Garage, announced a reduction in official support. Due to concerns raised by the academic community about the future of robotics research, Clearpath issued a statement confirming that it would continue to do all it could to support ROS.
Following the complete closure of Willow Garage in early 2014 , Clearpath took over full maintenance and support of the PR2 robot until at least 2016.
In August 2014, Clearpath became the first robotics company in the world to commit to not producing “killer robots” (Lethal Autonomous Weapons ), and continues to support initiatives to ensure ethical development of AI and autonomous systems.
By March 2015, Clearpath announced a $14 million Series A investment led by RRE Ventures to fund the development of products capable of automating hazardous work in industrial and manufacturing facilities. Shortly thereafter, they announced the first of their line of OTTO vehicles with General Electric as their first customer and strategic investor, and announced that Tesla, Inc. co-founder Mark Tarpenning had joined their advisory board. At the same time, he continued to develop and sell systems designed to fulfill his original mandate of helping researchers work more efficiently.
In October 2016, a Series B funding round was announced, led by, which also added Caterpillar Inc. as another strategic investor.