Robotic solution provider for the construction industry Dusty Robotics has closed a US$45m (£36.3m) Series B round, with the latest funding going towards growing its team, expanding its product offerings, and accelerate manufacturing with the goal of deploying Dusty products on all construction sites in the US.
The round was led by Scale Venture Partners and joined by returning investors Baseline Ventures, Canaan Partners, Root Ventures, NextGen Venture Partners, and Cantos.
“Dusty is one of a handful of robotics start-ups to have identified an acute pain point in a traditional industry and brought a product to market in a remarkably short timeframe,” said Alex Niehenke, partner at Scale Venture Partners. “We are excited about Dusty’s potential to modernise the construction industry and believe this is the right team to do it. We’re bullish on Dusty’s bright future and thrilled to be fuelling its growth.”
Dusty’s FieldPrinter solution is designed to eliminates one of the most common sources of conflict on construction projects: incorrect hand-drawn layout using a chalk line process. The patented FieldPrinter solution automates the process of taking digital floor plans onto construction sites by printing them full-size on the floor through a combination of hardware, software, and services.
This end-to-end solution ensures that all trades build from the same set of plans, eliminating errors, expediting conflict resolution, and significantly reducing the cost and duration of construction.
“Construction is rampant with manual workflows — processes where a phone call, or an email, must be sent in order to move the project forward — or work that must be done precisely, via manual labour,” said Tessa Lau, founder and CEO of Dusty.
“With so little automation in the industry, it’s no wonder that 85% of projects finish over budget, contributing directly to the housing crisis. Our robot-powered solutions automate construction’s manual workflows, increasing productivity across the industry while also creating better working conditions for skilled craftspeople.”
Recent advances in FieldPrinter technology have made the solution easy to adopt by skilled construction professionals, Dusty said. The FieldPrinter 1.0 release marks the first milestone of a production system ready for widespread use. New features in 1.0 include the ability to print around reshores or on congested sites using automatic obstacle detection and avoidance.
Additionally, it enables QR code printing for instant access to construction documents, as well as fast, efficient printing including single-pass printing of intersection points. The update also provides real-time progress monitoring.
