Cubic Robotics, a Russian startup developing robots that can communicate with their owners, has raised $500,000 in its second round of funding from a private investor, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported last week.
The financial injection came from Konstantin Senchenko, a Russian businessman who earlier helped the startup with $100,000 in seed capital. With a total of $600,000 in investment as of today, Cubic Robotics expects to keep developing its robot designated “Cubic,” adapting it to English-speaking markets.
The Cubic is designed for home use and can recognize human speech, answer questions it is asked, search for information in the Internet and even “read” text out loud. It is also said to be able to control “smart home” systems and have the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA) – a valuable extra for a robotic device which its developer is gearing up for serial production in the foreseeable future.
In January 2014 the company reportedly sold ten operational prototypes of the new robot and received more than 500 orders for a full mass-produced version.
