Gestalt Robotics of 2019: a recap

2019 was another exciting year of growing our company and advancing technology.

We moved to an amazing new office, re-branded, hired a batch of accomplished colleagues, were featured on national television, won industry-accredited awards for our advances in AI, met with the mayor of Berlin, and gave talks and demonstrations at conferences to name just a few highlights!

At our core, we have massively enjoyed working in a dynamic environment full of enticing challenges to be solved for and with our clients and are looking forward to all there is to come.

The following is a chronological summary of the significant and most formative occurrences of the last 12 months at Gestalt Robotics - without the occasional rigmarole (that still made it all worthwhile), client-business, or anything else that is behind NDAs and official contracts. Reflecting on all we have achieved in the past year still feels exhilarating.

Enjoy!

January

We kicked off the year by sharing our vision of IoT and all its peripheries like AI and robotics at the annual Industry 4.0 conference hosted by The Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering (HPI): Link to our blog-post

Next, we joined InSystems automation in their offices for a new Berlin Robotics meetup hosted by our Michel Herszak: Link to our LinkedIn-post

The first project we acquired in 2019 revolves around distributed system for measurement-aggregation for one of our automotive clients and involves the engineering pipeline for the complete system architecture.

February

This month we reveled in all the fame bestowed upon us: as part of the mayor’s press tour at Procter & Gamble’s Gillette factory in Berlin, we were able to talk about our work of automating Gillette’s processes and convey any further expertise to Michael Müller in a room full of the press: Link to our LinkedIn-post

Part of mayor’s entourage has been Germany’s 3rd largest network cable channel RTL who asked for an invitation to our offices to cover up-and-coming companies disrupting the big players in the field of automation: Link to our LinkedIn-post

Capping off the month was the eventual arrival of our new long-sought-after merch. Everyone got a fleek petrol hoodie to represent the Gestalt nation at upcoming fairs, events, or at the local supermarket.

March

The part about robotics in our name has never been more present than in the demonstrator we built to showcase our progress in the field of flexible grasping and adaptive workpiece handling: Link to our technology-page

This demonstrator was then used to introduce a pack of high-ranking industry-personnel to the future of manufacturing and AI’s place in it. Hosted by the VDMA in Cloister Eberbach (infamous as the setting for Name of the Rose), we lead an AI-workshop all day featuring out FLEX-demonstrator: Link to a short documentary (youtube)

Last, we were invited by the apothecary community to their fair Vision A, advising how the use of modern computer vision and AI technology can advance the field of pharmacies and chemists.

April

After the thriving 2018 Hanover Fair Industry, we once again ventured into the halls of the greats - this time even on two booths (#growth). At the BMWi stand, everything was in the focus of our technology portfolio, and in Hall 17 at the IGUS stand, our Chancellor Angela Merkel even came by to inspect our adaptive gripping demonstrator: Link to our blog-post

Shortly after we took our favorite product EPIC to bitkom’s startup fair hub.berlin to show how future-proof AI-companies in Berlin can actually be: Link to a short documentary (youtube)

Rounding out our most traveled month, another invite took us to Austria this time. KTM, Rosenbauer, and VRat hosted their Connected Mobility Hackathon to create impromptu teams, tackle a real-world problem in 3 days, and eventually face their expert jury. The win not only entails fame and fortune, but also the prospect of realizing the conjured projects with the client: Link to our blog-post

The cherry on top of the Sunday was the win at this year’s Deep Tech Awards for our Efficient Pipeline for Image Classification: Link to our blog-post

May

Invited by the CDU Deutschlands & CSU to their AI speed dating in the Bundestag: Got to present the state of AI by demonstrating EPIC to Germany’s biggest party, including the former Interior Minister de Maizière: Link to our LinkedIn-post

May heated up as multiple prototype jobs were being completed as the final milestones for select innovation projects. With those we moved to the next stages of taking these feasibility demonstrators and advancing them to their real respective industrial contexts.

June

Moving fast: after a brief workshop in Q1, our newest client was quick to take the progress from the meetup to the next level and invite us to their manufacturing premises. There met every stakeholder to discuss, brainstorm and layout joint plans for integrating our advanced environment perception systems into their products.

In collaboration with MobiledgeX, we are testing the flexible, network-integrated edge connectivity of AI services for the improved spatial perception of mobile robots and transport systems in industrial settings: Link to joint project-page

Also, we have been showcasing Edge-enabled AI-Skills for robotics together with Telekom Innovation Laboratories at Berlin’s Long Night of Science: Link to our LinkedIn-post

July

In front of a packed hall of future-shaping CEOs and investors who, like us, are driven by the digital revolution, we presented our application fields in 5 crisp minutes and got under the top 99 of NOAH’s launch pad: Link to our blog-post

Our robotics expert, Prof. Lambrecht, was at WearIt Berlin and demonstrated in a sold-out auditorium which role robots will occupy in the industry in the future. Under the title “Assigned to assist: robots are not here to take your job,” the lecture deals with the roles of machines as well as humans in a future-proof scenario of collaboration and cooperation: Link to our blog-post

German business news magazine Wirtschafts Woche put us into their founder-focussed op-ed amongst startups tackling AI and how they will be dealing with privacy when dealing with the still-necessary thirst for data: Link to our LinkedIn-post

Following A1 Telekom Austria’s invitation to their IoT Challenge, we prevailed amongst over 200 international contenders to make it to the final five: Link to our LinkedIn-post

Our autonomous mobility platform is making great strides towards the factory of the future. Handelsblatt wrote an extensive report about our joint cooperation with Deutsche Telekom, OSRAM and Fraunhofer IPK: Link to our LinkedIn-post

Above mentioned platform’s active application has been documented by Deutsche Telekom for their marketing of 5G: Link to a short documentary (youtube)

August

The sun was out, and so were we. Following our annual tradition of officially skipping work, our founders rented a boat (plus captain) for a day, and we cruised around Brandenburg to enjoy the weather, the water, spicy burgers, cold beers, and the team in swim gear.

We kept on riding high: with confidence and pride, but also elation did we receive the official order for an incredibly interesting project of advancing the use of polarized cameras in conjunction with AI.

Being true to its name, our mobility platform got integrated into a beast of a machine - Crayler, the truck-mounted forklift by Palfinger. Powered by the edge and cloud via 5G, the AGV receives a target position and navigates completely autonomously via high precision GPS: Link to short live demo documentary (youtube)

New software products we further developed were our Neural Net Inspector to see what your AI is actually doing and why it is doing the things its doing as well as our inspection SDK for automatic part auditing: Link to our technology-page

Even though there was so much happening in engineering, this month was especially exciting for our marketing-team. Not only did we redo our branding entirely, fit with the next evolution of our icosahedron, new color-scheme, and font-pairing, but we also overhauled the alignment of the company itself. With it, of course, we scrapped the old homepage and built something new from the ground-up. More about this in a future blog-post.

September

Werner-von-Siemens Center for Industry and Science’s goal is to become the supporting association for research projects in Berlin. As a patron of the new campus in Siemensstadt, we are part of a great team in addition to being one of the CEOs we are in charge of finances: Link to our blog-post

We were proud to announce our acknowledgment as finalists at the DatSci Awards: the joint smart logistics project for the integration of Cloud Edge into factory-owned campus networks by Deutsche Telekom Labs has been part of the top three in the Best Use of Data Science / AI for Industry 4.0 category.

Everything Cloud Robotics with our very own Michel Herszak at DMEXCO - Digital Marketing Expo & Conference: “Things must get real now–How to Transfer the Hype around AI to Usable&Responsible Applications.” Link to panel-taping (youtube)

October

Once again, our premises are bursting at the seams. The structurally maximally used area is occupied by workstations, next-gen robotics prototypes are blocking the windows and on the balcony one can hardly save oneself from fresh tomatoes. Time to expand again and make room for all the new colleagues. To an even livelier area and to our own Spree-access! Link to our blog-post

We're not done unpacking and were already part of BerlinRobotics' new podcast with InSystems Automation. A great way to christen our new & huge conference room: Link to our linkedin-post

Even though we are still in the talks at this moment in time, did we fly over to the states after an invitation of interested telecommunication parties to talk about bringing our automation via 5G and edge cloud expertise to the other side of the pond.

November

In the course of the large-scale study “Berlin now: digital economy and industry go hand in hand,” we received the UVB, the IBB, and a discerning selection of the press in our new premises to not only impart the study but offer a fitting ambiance as well: Link to our blog-post

Doubling down on an extra compelling robotics project finally payed off - after a year-long evaluation process, we were proud to receive the newest partner into our client-network and start working on automated worker assistance for an especially renowned Fortune 500.

December

Last one this year - Following the invitation by VDMA, we attended the 5G CMM EXPO to talk about or view and involvement in Low Latency Computing und Intelligence as a Service. Please have a look at the excellent video summary done by the host: Link to our LinkedIn-post

What better way to drum up the last reserves to finalize the remaining projects for this year, than with company-wide festivities prohibiting anyone actually to work? Secret Santa, eggnog, glogg, endless amounts of food for all idiosyncrasies, games, themes rooms, powerpoint karaoke, and indeed every single member of Gestalt in one place - aka the whole shebang.

With half a foot already on our way into the holidays, our families already expectant, the first snow on the horizon, could 2019 not end on a higher note: intense and granular examination and debate over the last few months resulted in us getting two immensely high-profile projects as Christmas presents. One, a miniaturized manufacturing demonstrator for the upcoming MWC20 and two, an enclosed robotic setup for analysis-automation in a big manufacturing-plant.

2019 set the bar, off to topping it in 2020!

A warm welcome to the new decade by everyone here at Gestalt. Thank you for being part of our journey!