The Zurich-based startup company SynSense has raised a double-digit million amount from two Chinese venture capital firms, Maxvision and RunWoo, in a strategic investment round. The exact amount of the investment was not disclosed, according to an article from startupticker.ch.
The new capital will be used to further develop the DYNAP-CNN2 chip. The chip is designed to provide low-power-consumption support for complex visual applications such as autonomous flying and obstacle avoidance.
SynSense specializes in neuromorphic computing, which involves computing processes that are carried out using neuromorphic chips. The chips learn based on the model of the human brain.
Thanks to the world’s first neuromorphic programmable robot, which SynSense unveiled together with the company QunYu at the 22nd China Shantou (Chenghai) International Toy Fair in early April, the possibilities for human-robot interaction are expanding. QunYu is a leading Chinese intelligent programmable toy company. According to a statement, the robot can recognize, visually perceive and imitate the human body.
It is SynSense’s Speck chip that makes this possible. “By waving your arms, the robot can learn your movements and wave its arms in response,” explained Yannan Xing, Senior Algorithm Application Engineer at SynSense.
SynSense was founded in 2017 as a spin-off from the Institute of Neuroinformatics at the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH). In 2020, the company moved its headquarters to Chengdu in China, but it maintains an office in Zurich.
