Minerva Humanoids raised $10 million to create robots for hazardous work

Minerva Humanoids has emerged from stealth. It has about $10 million in seed funding to develop semi-autonomous humanoid robots for dangerous work in the energy and public safety sectors.

Who gave the money

The round was led by General Catalyst and co-led by Long Journey Ventures and Credo Ventures. Also participating were MVP Ventures, Kaya, RunwayFBU, Compound, Founders Embassy, ​​Hugging Face, Codecademy, YG, Walter Ventures, Tiny Ventures, Chaotica and Babylon.

The San Francisco-based company is also launching its first paid industry pilot this month.

Roger robot and its tasks

Minerva makes a robot called Roger. The idea is this: trained specialists perform dangerous tasks remotely, while remaining physically out of the risk zone.

The company is initially targeting oil and gas - onshore and offshore, mine clearance (EOD), chemical and hazardous materials disposal, and other public safety work.

The founders are CEO Sandor Felber and CTO Maurice Ramet. Roger was designed around the judgment and dexterity of the people already doing the work, rather than trying to remove humans from the process entirely.

The semi-autonomous robot can be controlled via a VR headset and haptic gloves with feedback. The operator sees the image from the robot’s cameras, feels it with his hands and remotely performs subtle manipulations.

Minerva Intelligence's proprietary control system takes care of balance, fall recovery and navigation, and turns remote operator commands into physical actions. Low-latency control loops provide instant response to operator movements, and full body control of the robot can be learned in less than five minutes, the company says.

“People die every day in jobs that the rest of the world takes for granted.

We did not intend to replace the people doing this work. We were going to build a robot that would allow their judgment to do the work without requiring them to risk their lives for our safety or our energy."

- Sandor Felber

Fatality estimates

Minerva estimates that around 7,000 energy workers worldwide are killed on the job every year. That's about one death every 75 minutes.

The figure is the company's own estimate: they took the global figure for fatal work accidents from the International Labor Organization and applied it to the International Energy Agency's estimate of 76 million people - that's how many people work in the global energy sector.

Separately, Minerva points out the risks of EOD and hazardous materials response teams. Remote robots have been used there for decades, but they are usually wheeled machines with one robotic arm and limited dexterity.

Prototype in five months

Minerva claims to have gone from idea to a fully operational walking humanoid in five months - including design, production and assembly of Roger.

Software and AI are mainly developed in the USA, and the first Roger prototypes are assembled in Germany. The company plans to produce commercial versions of the humanoids in both Germany and the United States, building a Western supply chain without relying on single-source Chinese components.

Felber previously played a key role in launching MIT CSAIL's research line on humanoid robots with AI and worked on Tesla's Optimus program. Ramet spent six years at Boston Dynamics, where he was one of the technical leads on the Stretch robot, taking it from early prototype to commercial product.

“Building a humanoid from scratch is usually a years-long project, but Sandor and Maurice did it in less than six months.

Releasing hardware at this rate means taking physical AI out of the lab and into the world where it is actually needed, and strengthening the resilience of critical industries by removing humans from the most dangerous work environments.”

- Robin Dechant, Partner, General Catalyst

“Robots can go where humans shouldn’t go.

Minerva is giving the world robots that will protect the critical infrastructure of the West, and we are incredibly pleased to be their early backers.”

- Lee Jacobs, Partner, Long Journey Ventures

Deployment in Energy and Public Safety

Before the official launch, Minerva held a demonstration and performance evaluation at the NATO Mine Action Center of Excellence in Šamorin, Slovakia.

The company has also established research partnerships with the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) and the University of Waterloo. Work with MBZUAI is focused on developing humanoid capabilities for the energy sector. But the collaboration with Waterloo is designed to improve the perception of robots in smoke, darkness, sensor failure and other conditions where conventional vision systems may fail.

Minerva says it is also exploring deployment at two of the world's ten busiest airports and has already completed on-site testing focused on high-risk public safety applications.

The company plans to direct new investments to the further development of AI and Roger hardware for energy and explosive ordnance disposal tasks. Further deployments are planned for later this year.