The wisdom of a science professor, the real world pragmatism of a consummate tech professional and the wonderous vision of a prodigy - this is the trio that that runs Ati Motors, a Bangalore-based autonomous vehicle startup. Dr. Vinay was a professor of Computer Science at IISc, coinventor of the Simputer and Strand Life Sciences. Saurabh Chandra worked in several startups, founded an IT company Neev Technologies that he sold to French multinational Publicis. And, Saad Naaser is a 19-year child prodigy who dropped out of school to become an entrepreneur, and has won several national and international engineering competitions like Intel Iris and Broadcom Masters. 

Calling Ati Motors a 'rogue startup' as it belies pretty much every traditional expectation of a tech startup, Chandra says his company is making an all-new autonomous cargo vehicle, and addressing tough business challenges with true engineering might. Sherpa is the vehicle built by the four-year old Bangalore startup. It is a Level 4 autonomous cargo vehicle that can carry a payload weighing upto 1 tonne in a semi-private location. Sherpa is the only autonomous industrial vehicle in this class globally that delivers autonomy for both indoor and outdoor scenarios. This increases the operational space from factory floor to yard level autonomy and also in-campus road network. This superior operational capability is achieved through a complete ground up design that includes designing the physical vehicle, electric drive train and the autonomy stack together for optimization across layers.  

The original algorithms help achieve robust autonomy in various lighting conditions (including complete darkness), floor quality (including chipped, rough or oily) and gradient. There are no infrastructure aids required and even lane markers are optional. While this makes autonomy accessible to many existing Indian facilities that could not deploy such solutions, it also delivers superior results in modern environments. Industrial robotics platforms still believe 3D LIDARs are unaffordable. Sherpa uses 3D LIDARs in a similar fashion as public road autonomy platforms but with original algorithms suited for the industrial environment. It sees much more of the world compared to a 2D LIDAR’s worm’s eye view and makes for robustness across a variety of environments. The Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) is an Industry 4.0 and Industrial IoT ready product. Its advanced API allows integration with other IoT products and ERP systems. Real time monitoring is available, and analytics can be easily exported into the reporting system of choice. The hardware platform itself is extensible to allow mounting of racks, sensors, robotic arms or conveyors. Easy interfacing for both power and connectivity requirements exists. 

Additionally, Sherpa is capable of processing data on the edge and on the move, mitigating the reliance on a centralised network for critical functions. Ati Motors has applied research capabilities and has built the complete autonomy stack ground up to cater to challenging environments (like those found in Indian industrial environments), which existing AMRs aren’t equipped to cater to. 

While Sherpa Tug, a one tonne trolley puller, has been deployed in tough manufacturing environments with very rough conditions, Ati has also built a smaller sibling of Sherpa, called Sherpa Lite, which has found excellent uptake in e-commerce warehouses for order fulfillment. Both the Sherpa Tug and Sherpa Lite have been extensively tested on the IISc campus, where the startup has a collaboration with Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems. The Sherpa Tug has also been successfully deployed at a multinational auto OEM's manufacturing unit in Chennai.

Ati boasts of an interdisciplinary team of around 30 engineers across machine learning/AI, power electronics, control systems, mechanical engineering, system software and electronic hardware. Recently, the startup raised $3.5 million in a pre-Series A round led by Blume Ventures and Exfinity Venture Partners. MFV Partners and a syndicate on LetsVenture led by Livspace founder Ramakant Sharma also participated in the round. The company will use the funding for manufacture and deployment of a large fleet of autonomous vehicles in factories and warehouses, in both domestic and global markets. The key focus outside of India will be in the US market where the company will establish sales and system integration partners. Ati Motors had earlier raised a seed fund from Village Global — a Bay Area based early stage fund backed by some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos among others. This was also Village Global's first investment in an India-based hardware startup.

Chandra said, “We are now fueled up and ready to accelerate our go to market plans. People often think of technology from India as being a cheaper and a stripped down version of the cutting edge. We have shown that to solve autonomy challenges in India one has to go beyond the current state of art and that should serve us well in our global expansion too.”