Houston Mechatronics raises $20m for sub-sea robot development

Houston Mechatronics Inc. (HMI), has announced a Series B investment of $20 million from Transocean and existing investor Schlumberger, which led HMI’s Series A investment in 2015.

Much of the new funding will be directed towards the commercialization of HMI’s first product, Aquanaut, a sub-sea service robot that can perform complex tasks over low bandwidth networks, eliminating the need for surface ships.

Beyond Aquanaut, HMI intends to continue developing novel sub-sea capability and other robotic technology for use in oil and gas applications with an objective to increase reliability, efficiency, capability, and safety.

“We are extremely pleased to have Transocean and Schlumberger as investors in our company,” said HMI President Matt Ondler. “They both bring to us tremendous strategic value.”

“Our approach to Aquanaut and other products is uniquely inspired and driven by how we designed and operated robots during spaceflight. We believe these capabilities have direct applicability to the oil and gas industry, as well as other industries including defence,” stated HMI CTO Nic Radford.