Ava Robotics

Ava Robotics builds autonomous telepresence robots for workplaces. The robot—also called Ava—autonomously navigates spaces (offices, hospitals, manufacturing facilities, etc.) with the use of a 3D depth camera, lidar, and an inertial measurement unit, mapping its environment as it goes. Ava is equipped with enterprise-level video conferencing capabilities including high-fidelity speakers and an omnidirectional microphone, so once it arrives at its destination, it supports everything from remote healthcare visitation, to distributed workforce meetings, to remote facility tours, to security patrolling, to “on-site” training or inspection.

The company offers its Ava fleet through a robots-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model, in which the robots aren’t sold outright. Rather, customers pay a monthly fee for access to the equipment alongside additional services Ava Robotics provides. Early pricing for each robot was less than $1,000/month, and included technical support.

“Robotics companies I’ve worked at in the past have sold their hardware outright; that was their only pricing model,” says Youssef Saleh, Founder and CEO at Ava (formerly at iRobot). “At Ava, we wanted to try a different approach. The RaaS model allows companies to ‘hire’ Ava at a monthly cost, spread out over time. Opex expenditures tend to be more appealing to corporations—those monthly fees pay themselves back in a single business trip that doesn’t have to be taken thanks to telepresence.”