Montreal robotics automation startup Omnirobotic is closing a $6.5 million ($5 million USD) funding round for its AI platform for factory robots.

The Fonds de solidarité FTQ and Export Development Canada (EDC) led the round with participation from Real Ventures and a joint venture including the company’s current employees. Omnirobotic will use the new cash to continue building autonomous robotic capabilities for high-mix production environments.

The company says the robots will complete processes like painting, welding and machining, with limited human oversight.

Founded in 2016, Omnirobotic helps high-mix manufacturers with skilled labor shortages and reduce the environmental impact of their production processes. The company says ​autonomous ​industrial robots will be more capable of adapting to constantly changing manufacturing environments. They can also help displace physically dangerous jobs.

“Our AI platform shows potential for significant productivity gains, along with substantial energy and consumable savings per part produced that are meaningful to all kinds of industrial manufacturers,” said CEO Francois Simard. “The technology itself is transformative because these manufacturers will finally be able to use industrial robots for value added tasks on ​never-before-seen parts within ​unstructured environments.”

The company says conventional industrial robots are unable to solve many of the challenges involved in the mass customization of goods. Omnirobotic can enable robotic production processes to respond to parts in near real-time.

“Now that any process can be intelligently automated, manufacturers will be looking for their own ways to automate tasks for which they otherwise have difficulty recruiting and retaining skiller, qualified workers - something even more essential in the wake of additional workforce challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” added Simard.

“We started with industrial paint, but paint is just the beginning. Our investors believe in our plan to build the definitive AI platform for Factory Robots,” adds Omnirobotic CEO Simard. “This won’t just unlock robotics for the entire manufacturing industry, but will also make costly, extensive, painstaking robot programming a thing of the past, paving the way for a new era of ​autonomous manufacturing​.”