Company History

We started working on this in 2018. Can you imagine—back in 2018! The first rover from Yandex only appeared in 2019. It was truly a long time ago. The idea came from the realization that in the future everything would indeed become autonomous: cars, robots—they would be everywhere. That thought simply wouldn’t leave me.

Well, it’s just… you know how it happens? An idea comes into an entrepreneur’s head. In reality, you probably get around 200 ideas a day. Most of them get filtered out by time. Usually, the next day you wake up and think: “That’s nonsense, not interesting.” But the idea that the future would be autonomous, unmanned, and robotic stuck so deeply that I couldn’t get rid of it. I kept thinking, reading, studying. I fully understood how difficult and almost impossible it was. And when I talked about it to friends and acquaintances back then, everyone reacted the same way: — Yeah, cool. Okay…

I realized: this is one of those things where you just have to start and move forward step by step. That’s how the idea came to find someone who could work on it. And I found him. It was my longtime acquaintance—Gleb. He is still our CTO and the main brain behind the entire project. I remember persuading him for several months: “Let’s work on this topic, this idea, this direction.”

Naturally, his first reaction was rejection. He said: — This is the domain of large companies; we won’t have enough money or resources.

Autonomy is really difficult—most likely nothing will work out.

But eventually I managed to convince him, and we started building that very autonomy.

From these discussions, two key principles were formed:

1. We go deep and build everything ourselves, but slowly—because we don’t have large funding.
2. The earlier we start, the faster we’ll have a ready technology by the time it becomes popular and hyped.

Based on these principles, we decided: we are going into autonomy.

At that point, I bought two vehicles:

— A small robotic test vehicle (we called it “Flea”).

— A Toyota Prius — a full-scale car for public roads.

At that time, we didn’t yet know how we would apply the technology—we were simply building “autonomy.” It was a great time.

We were aware of the problems with SLAM (everyone’s favorite navigation method). It has its drawbacks:

— It performs poorly in open spaces because LiDAR has nothing to latch onto.

— It struggles in dynamically changing environments (for example, in warehouses where pallets are constantly moved—it loses the original map).

— Most importantly: SLAM accumulates errors over time.

So we took a different path—not like the other 99% of teams working in robotics. We created a mini GPS analog: we took RTLS (Real-Time Locating System) technology and applied it to autonomy.

How it works:

— Radio beacons are placed around the perimeter of the facility.

— A tag is installed on the robot.

— RTLS communicates with the tag and determines the robot’s exact position in space.

This provided stability. Later, we added SLAM, resulting in a hybrid navigation system.

Then the question arose: where should we apply this technology? Although my core business is warehouse automation (we develop WMS systems), I wasn’t particularly interested in enabling autonomy for warehouse robots. We were looking for a field where autonomy would provide an obvious advantage.

That’s how we came to cleaning. People pushing floor scrubbers can be replaced—machines can be made autonomous.

We began developing a cleaning robot. For about a year, engineers designed the structure, worked on the design, and assembled everything into a single product. Then for another year and a half, we developed the “driver software.” As a result, Unit was created—a fully autonomous full-scale machine.

Just think about how impressive this is! We created a product from scratch. It’s not a cup or a toothbrush—it’s a large machine on wheels that moves independently, avoids obstacles, and follows routes.

Since our core expertise is the “driver software” (which can make any wheeled vehicle autonomous), we continue developing other directions as well. For example, we also made the Toyota Prius autonomous and are testing it on closed tracks.

For warehouse equipment, we will follow a different approach: we take hardware from Chinese manufacturers, equip it with our “brains,” and the machines are controlled by our software.

This concept allows us to scale: we can automate various types of equipment—not only cleaning machines but also warehouse machinery.

Telegram channel: https://t.me/robertgasp

WMS system: https://yacurier.com/wms_skladskaya_programma/

Warehouse automation: http://yacuai.com