Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Oliver Krieg, Roundpeg Technologies: We build robots that have AI-supported human recognition for industrial production. This makes it possible to deploy the robots in the middle of the production line and have them work with people at high speed without fencing. This makes it much easier for Roundpeg Technologies to manufacture products.
Because if you use a highly automated line with robots in production, completely enclosed and fenced in, you have enormous investment requirements and at the same time you’re extremely inflexible. If, for example, parts aren’t available or the market doesn’t accept the product, it’s hard to make changes. That’s why a lot of manual work is still used in manufacturing in Germany today, which affects SMEs as well as large companies. However, this type of production doesn’t scale because it’s a problem to automate small manual processes.
We want to fill this gap with our system by placing the robot in the middle of the production line between the workers. We don’t need a fence because our robot recognizes people and doesn’t endanger them. This makes it much easier to further automate tasks in the operation and present new manufacturing concepts that are much more flexible and also scale much better.
Etienne Eichstaedt: In general, new products have a higher manual share in manufacturing to maintain a certain degree of flexibility. Once a product is successful, you can drive automation through the use of our robot with incoming cashflow and deploy the team for new products. In times of skilled labor shortage, we support people with our robot in physically demanding or monotonous work and increase production quality as well as production volume.
With Roundpeg Technologies, collision never happens in the first place
Munich Startup: But that already exists!
Oliver Krieg: There is no robot today that can directly recognize people. Current concepts revolve mainly around so-called collaborative robots. They are built to stop if they collide with people. To avoid injuring anyone, they have only very low working speeds. We can completely bypass that because with our all-in-one system integrated into the robot, collision never happens in the first place. The big advantage is that the working speed is significantly higher because our robot’s movement is not regulated by possible collision.
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Oliver Krieg: I previously managed product management at a larger corporation. There I saw that many ideas failed because of high investment costs for production. Robots in production lines do reduce these costs, which is why the collaborative robot approach is fundamentally great. But they simply can’t keep up with the normal production speed of a human. So you always have to build your production processes around these robots. I wanted to change that with a robot that doesn’t collide.
Of course, you don’t start a startup like Roundpeg Technologies alone. I especially rekindled old contacts from my personal network. With my co-founder Etienne, for example, I worked many years ago in the TUfast Formula Student team at TU München and was able to get him excited about the robotics world.
“A robot that just stands there doesn’t make sense”
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Etienne Eichstaedt: The biggest challenge was definitely the Motek trade fair in October 2022. It was a major milestone in our timeline that we absolutely had to meet because this fair was the perfect platform to present our system to the world for the first time. And it’s not enough to show up with a few warm product ideas. You only get attention if you have a real product. A robot that just stands there doesn’t make sense. That’s why it was important to have a functioning product there that would turn heads and also move and stop when it’s supposed to stop. We wanted to put a high-quality robot there and accordingly the workload before it was still very high.
Oliver Krieg: The weeks before were tight, I have to say. But in the end, people only believe you if you can show how the product works in the field. We really wanted to push our MVP so far that we could talk to customers at the fair about their problems and not just about our ideas. And yes, that meant a few shorter nights, but it was worth it: We even managed to take orders on site. What’s exciting about our solution is that people understand it immediately. When the robot moves at high speed and then suddenly stops in front of someone, you intuitively understand what that means. Then customers immediately start thinking about their problems and how we could solve them.
Roundpeg Technologies prepares for market launch
Munich Startup: Where do you want to be in one year, where in five years?
Oliver Krieg: Our market launch is planned for next year and we’re currently preparing everything so it goes smoothly. We’ll focus on Germany and Europe first. Of course there’s a desire to expand further, but we have to see where the journey takes us. In any case, we’re doing everything we can to help Roundpeg Technologies continue to grow and really make it easier for producers to bring products to market.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Oliver Krieg: We are Munich natives ourselves, we grew up here and studied here. It’s simply a wonderful city with a lot of quality of life. When we finished studying, UnternehmerTUM was still relatively young, still a startup itself. In the meantime, a real startup ecosystem has emerged here in Munich, which helps tremendously. We reached out to UnternehmerTUM early after we started, and they supported us tremendously, as did Baystartup. Both helped us in many places, which was super valuable for us. And Munich is also a good starting point for recruiting employees.
Etienne Eichstaedt: The startup density here in Munich is simply very high. You can exchange ideas with each other and help one another. We also learned a lot from other startups about dos and don’ts. Through our network, for example, we got to know Fabian from Fazua. He showed us how they build their drives locally, which is of course very interesting for us. The exchange in the ecosystem simply gives you many possibilities.
“You can’t reinvent the wheel all day long”
Munich Startup: Outsource or do it yourself?
Oliver Krieg: We actually like to do things ourselves because that way we have more influence over how the product turns out. But the truth is: at a startup, you can’t reinvent the wheel all day long. So we mainly do the things ourselves that differentiate us in the market and that are perceived by our customers.
Etienne Eichstaedt: At a certain point you just have to focus and prioritize. Then you just have to outsource some things. But we don’t want to give everything away – as Oliver says, the goal for many things is to keep the hat in our hands too.
