Deeptech Labs in €2.6m round for Dutch company AutoFill
Deeptech Labs has participated in a €2.6m pre-series A funding round for AutoFill Technologies, a Dutch deep tech company revolutionising inspection workflow processes for the automotive and rail industries.
The highly coveted accelerator, initiated by Arm and the University of Cambridge, among others, was joined by lead investor Innovation Industries. Rick Belluzzo, former COO of Microsoft, and Bram Schot, former CEO of Audi – both of whom joined AutoFill’s board of advisors this year – also participated.
Miles Kirby, CEO of Deeptech Labs, said: “Following AutoFill’s completion of our powerful and highly coveted accelerator programme, we are delighted to demonstrate our commitment to the company.”
Harm De Vries, co-founder and general partner at Innovation Industries, said: “We are convinced that AutoFill will have a revolutionary impact on inspection workflow processes for numerous industries – potentially saving billions of dollars a year.”
AutoFill’s solution combines vision technology with multisensor data fusion to identify anomalies and increase the accuracy of quality standards. It fits seamlessly into existing operational processes, boosting efficiencies, objective reporting and safety.
Speaking to the Cambridge Independent, Autofill’s co-founder and CFO Gideon Richheimer said: “Currently, AutoFill’s solution does not require the use of robots. Our camera units are the size of a shoebox. Once the units have been installed on-site by our team of experts, there’s no need for other people to operate them. The multi-sensors will automatically capture data from the object – such as a car or train – synchronously, at high frame rates, while the object passes the sensor suite at low speeds.
“All the data is synchronised and pre-processed on-site – removing the need of using the cloud – and post-processed through edge computing, using computer algorithms created by our developers at AutoFill. These same algorithms extract relevant object information from the processed data and report any anomaly detected.
“So, in terms of computer vision and machine learning, we could say that our system is continuously training, starting from the moment the units are deployed in live settings.”
A drone-mounted option “is on our near-future roadmap”, added Mr Richheimer.
He said: “At the moment, AutoFill is a B2E (business to enterprise) company, so there’s no direct contact with individual consumers. But our clients do receive fully dynamic dashboarding tools – similar to apps – that show real-time inspections and results from the object inspections. Additionally, our clients may opt to extend the solution of our services to their consumers if they’d like.”
This latter remark opens up an intriguing scenario – that one day, perhaps soon, it will be possible for members of the public to scan their car after an accident, or their home after a flood, to enable the insurance claim to be kickstarted remotely. Until then, Autofill is in B2E mode.
Bram Schot, former Audi CEO and AutoFill board member, said: “I joined AutoFill’s board of advisors earlier this year because I was so impressed by the experience of the leadership team and the credibility of its solution. My subsequent investment in its future is testament to that continued confidence, and I look forward to witnessing the results of this successful funding round first-hand.”
