California-Based Robotics Startup Company Trifo To Launch Cleaning Robots In India

The company was officially founded by Zhe Zhang, who had earlier worked with Microsoft Robotics and Magic Leap, in 2016. Trifo is a full-stack AI home robot company that deals with 3D mapping, AI and machine learning, robotics and sensors.

"The home robotics market is in early stages, and very promising," Zhang told The Indian Express.

"With our robotics techniques, we are trying to make a robot smarter and more efficient," he added.

Zhang, who has a PHD in robotics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, envisions a smart home where the vacuum robots can effectively perform the job of cleaning floors, removing dust, pet hair and other wastes without causing any inconvenience to the owner of the house.

These soon to be launched robot vacuums belong to the latest crop of AI-enabled home vacuum cleaners geared up with SoC, sensors, cameras and lasers that aids them to form a 3D picture of the owner's house and keep away from walls, furniture and other objects on the floor. A charging dock also comes with the robotic vacuums with which they charge themselves.

Lucy, Trifo's $799 flagship robotic vacuum is equipped with a 1080p camera that can spot things even at night, which has been made possible through a depth sensor that can detect objects in low light.

Lucy has the ability to map and learn everything about the owner's space and can even detect small barriers which are an inch in height such as slippers and books.

An ARM-based chipset allows Lucy to divide a space into pre-labelled rooms automatically, based on the detected furnishings. Lucy can also be used with Amazon's Alexa as it has a 3,000 Pa suction and a 5,200Ah battery.

Being a robotics company, Trifo has also come up with its personal vision-based monitoring and tracking algorithms.

"We have a lot of patents and technologies to deal with the visual information," Zhang said.

Trifo plans to launch the vacuum in India as it considers the country to be the next big market for house robots. The robotic company is already present in the US and plans to open up in the European markets as well.

However, Trifo is going to face stiff competition from other robotic companies like iRobot, Milagrow and Xiaomi as there is no market leader as such in robotic vacuum space in India presently.

"India is a very important potential market. I think in most parts of Asia, it's less than 20 percent of market penetration which we feel is the great opportunity," Zhang added.

Zhang and his team are in talks with several distributors and partners for the launch here.

Trifo has offices in Beijing and Shenzhen with a strong team that has expertise in computer vision and robotics, some even having the experience of working with Intel and Microsoft.

Zhang said that his company has raised more than $27 million from different venture capital funds such as Samsung Ventures, Matrix Partners and Walden International.

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