Wandelbots raises $6.8M to make programming a robot as easy as putting on a jacket

Industrial robotics is on track to be worth around $20 billion by 2020, but while it may have something in common with other categories of cutting-edge tech - innovative use of artificial intelligence, pushing the boundaries of autonomous machines that are disrupting pre-existing technology - there is one key area where it differs: each robotics firm uses its own proprietary software and operating systems to run its machines, making programming the robots complicated, time-consuming and expensive.
A startup out of Germany called Wandelbots has come up with an innovative way to skirt around that challenge: using software built by the company, a person wearing a jacket fitted with dozens of sensors can now program the actions of robots from the 12 most popular industrial robotics makers.