MORE THAN A JOB.
GIM ROBOTICS - 10 YEARS OF MAKING
Ten years ago founded GIM Robotics specializes in design, research, development and integration of intelligent robotic systems. The four founders of this 45 employees (9 PhDs) deep-tech company were earlier key persons at the Automation Technology laboratory in Helsinki University of Technology (nowadays Aalto University) with more than a century (+100 years) of joint experience in Generic Intelligent Machines research and development to be commercialized. During the years 1985-2013 the group used in total more than 20M€ to research projects focusing on field and service robotics.
GIM Robotics has been serving over 60 companies, including 10 Fortune 500 companies. We are masters in providing robust centimetre level localisation and real-time situational awareness functionalities. Our software is working in all-weather conditions in all sorts of environments, including GNSS-challenged and even GNSS-denied ones.
MATURE, BUT VERY AGILE
Our competence covers sensor fusion, real time 3D localization and mapping, traversability analysis, computer vision systems and dynamic object tracking. We specialize in design, research, development and integration of intelligent robotic systems. GIM Robotics delivers software that makes mobile working machines in all industries more intelligent, precise and efficient. We deliver R&D and integration services for robotic systems. Our robot platforms accelerate your research and development. With our help, your vehicles can start driving autonomously.
Based on our long experience we can offer our clients, for example:
- Excellent team of experts
- Pre-existing background IP that accelerates the development
- Pre-existing infrastructure and pipeline for accelerated development
- Solid experience with full-stack integration for fully autonomous systems
- Up-to-date market intelligence with technologies
- Experience to work remotely even with challenging integration and development projects
- Continuous improvement of the background IP
- Agile project management and software development with scrum
1985-2013. LAYING THE FOUNDATION
Based on Professor Aarne Halme’s pioneering work at Helsinki University of Technology (Aalto University since 2010) Automation Technology Laboratory since 1985, GIM Robotics has its roots deep in the mobile robotics worldwide evolution. Group’s early decades were filled with all sorts of machines, including 6-, 4- and 2-legged walking machines, ball-shaped robots, multi-robot systems, underwater robotics, self-driving cars, All-Terrain-Vehicles and some robotized versions of modern working machines. Below is shown just a fraction of those machines and some happy moments from our University period, including our Academy of Finland funded coveted Centre of Excellence time (2008-2013) when we had Generic Intelligent Machines (CoE) together with Tampere University of Technology’s (currently Tampere University) Institute of Hydraulics and Automation (IHA) led by Professor Matti Vilenius. The pictures shown below illustrate our people, robots and projects from that period.
The star of the video shown below (from year 1993) is MECANT, the six-legged 1 ton weighing walking robot. The developed technology was later boosting the development of a walking harvester machine done by Plustech/Timberjack.
2014-2023. THE TIME OF ORGANIC GROWTH
Prof. Halme and some core researchers from the laboratory (Dr. Jussi Suomela, Dr. Jari Saarinen, and Dr. Jose Luis Peralta) decided to commercialize their extensive knowledge, and on January 3, 2014, GIM Robotics was founded. Jari was nominated as the CEO of the company and kept the position till early 2020, when he had to commit to 2017 founded sister company Sensible 4 as its CTO. At that point Dr. Tapio Taipalus was nominated as the new CEO. Tapio was an old friend from the laboratory with an extensive knowledge, not only from our mobile robotics lab, but thanks to his post university career also from some large flagship companies. He was successfully turning GIM Robotics from a kind-of semi-academic research organization, with deep love of physical robots, towards a real software company.
Over the years, GIM Robotics has navigated through diverse requirements set by different machines, use cases, economical situations, evolving regulatory framework, and whatnot else. We have understood the importance of knowing the technological development and using, benchmarking and in overall being aware of the latest advances related to all relevant sensors, CPUs, middleware solutions and other components, so that when the Operational Design Domain definition process with the client is in full speed, GIM Robotics has been able to say, with 100% confidence, what kind of combination of the above components would be needed to fulfill, often conflicting, requirements in an optimal way.
When companies want to move their new machines (or subsystems) from the Design and Development phase filled with Proof-of-Concepts, Pilots and Minimum Viable Product (MVP) into real Production phases with stable stream of releases, which are supported with solid service, maintenance, update and safety & regulation compliance related processes, big portion of those companies will either fail miserably, and are forced to ditch the product, or in some sad cases some might even be forced out of business as a result.
GIM Robotics has created a well-balanced portfolio of mature and robust in-house algorithms, to support our client’s journey towards productization. The integration of those solutions will enable the elementary capabilities, like precise 6D localization, environmental modelling with different types of maps, and situational awareness capabilities, in all-weather conditions, everywhere – in GNSS-challenged or even -denied environments.
2024. CROSSING THE CHASM, TOGETHER
GIM Robotics has been evolving steadily since it was founded in 2014 after three glorious decades at Helsinki University of Technology (later Aalto University). We are getting to that point, where we are finally ready to take the leap of faith from cutting-edge deep-tech robotic company into full-blooded software company with the main revenues coming from extensive global licensing sales. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, modern working machines will be transformed into field and service robots thanks to our top-notch localization, environmental modeling, and situational awareness SW modules. To get everything right from the beginning, it was clear that GIM Robotics would need some fresh blood with extensive experience in doing similar transformations. Especially, when our previous CEO, Dr. Tapio Taipalus, decided to look for new challenges.
After a successful recruitment process, we were all thrilled to welcome our new CEO, Mr. Pertti Lukkari to GIM Robotics in August 2022. Pertti had clearly the needed experience to take GIM to the next level. And that was not all. Our esteemed advisor Mr. Henrik Dahl, decided to walk the talk and put his money where his mouth is and become a partner and a board member. So, instead of having one more superstar helping us to conquer the world, we ended up having two to complement the amazing GIMster family.
OUR MOST VALUEABLE ASSESTS ARE THE GIMSTERS
GIM Robotics is a truly international community of people excited about what we create together. We, the GIMsters, are passionate about using our strengths to change industries, the future of work, and quite humbly, the world through automation and robotics. The software we develop doesn’t just run in the cloud but actually makes big machines move.
Our love of robots doesn’t just stop at work; we come together outside office hours to work on our personal projects too. The GIM workshop has seen electric skateboards, scooters and metronomes come to life.
Aleksi Turunen: “It’s the people. The camaraderie and sense of belonging I experience at GIM Robotics have made my time here truly special. We celebrate milestones together, lend a helping hand with everyday tasks, and stay connected even during holidays. Some of us even bring our electric scooters and skateboards to the workshop, collaborating on projects long after the workday ends.”
Eunchan Park: “The variety of tasks keeps the job interesting. You get to develop your skills in other things than just robotics and that is what I love about working here!”
Abdelrahman Abdeldaim: “My suggestion for the next intern, is to bring out their passion for the field of automation and robotics. I have always thought that you need to have experience first and then you will get your dream job. To my surprise, the passion was one of the priorities in the GIMster community.”
If you felt a buzz while reading what Eunchan, Aleksi and Abdelrahman are saying, you might have found your future home. In that case, you should definitely go to our CAREERS section.
OUR DEAR HEADQUATERS IN ESPOO HAS MANY NAMES
An office with a view is of course very nice, but if you are a LOTR fan, you most probably agree with us, when we say that dwarves are the most underrated charcters of the Saga. They get things done, everywhere and in every condition. That is the reason, why we are thrilled to work at our office, which some of us call fondly as Moria. Others call it equally fondly to GIMhole – the place where the sun don’t shine. The office is nice combination of comfortable office spaces and areas where even bigger robots can be tested, retrofitted and sometimes even build from the scratch.
Hidden from the world with a nice patch of forest and sturdy brick walls and protected with a proper fence, our yard is a perfect place to develop and test novel solutions for different types of robotized working machines and field and service robot.
Everything looks beautiful during the short but sweet Finnish summer. Joint barbecue sessions gather most of our guys around our CTO Jose, who owns the highly-valued GrillMaster title.
Our international staff consists of close to a dozen of different nationalities. The gender equality is still just a dream in our field, but luckily we have some kick-ass female GIMSters in the team, and we are constantly hoping to get more.
THE HERITAGE OF A GIANT
We lost our spiritual father, mentor, and co-founder, Professor (emeritius) Aarne Halme on Tuesday February 7th, 2023 at the age of 79. Aarne was committed to GIM Robotics and to robotics in general all the way till the end. Less than a week before his death, Aarne participated in a face-to-face board meeting at the office, and was filled with plans for GIM’s next steps. Some of us have been travelling our robotics journey together with Aarne since the beginning of 1990’s, that is more than 30 years already. We are sure that everybody understands how big a loss Aarne’s departure was for the company and for us all personally. We miss him dearly.
Read Aarne Halme in Memoriam from Aalto University and obituary (in Finnish) from Helsingin Sanomat.
SOME SWEET NEWS. READ MORE
The last six months have been filled with plenty of great moments to celebrate. We have got some great new clients, we have deepend our cooperation with our friends at Navitec Systems, we have won some new public funding projects, being hand-picked to a prestige accelator program, got a bunch of new GIMsters and whatnot else. If you are interested to know more, just visit our PRESS-RELEASES section.
WE ARE READY FOR A YEAR LONG PARTY TIME!
This milestone calls for a proper celebration. We already had the official 10 year party filled with camaraderie, memories, and laughter, together with both current GIMsters and their avecs, as well as with alumni from the beginning of GIM’s journey, including our univeristy times.
We will publish some pictures to this page, for those of you GIMsters, who couldn’t join us, and for others just to show how we PARTY.
Stay tuned!
