KALMAN Secures Funding for Innovative Unmanned Nuclear Plant Robots
South Korean robotics startup KALMAN, known for its innovative approach to replacing monitoring and maintenance tasks at nuclear power plants with unmanned robots, has secured follow-up investment from The Invention Lab. This new injection of funds amounts to KRW 500 million, bringing the total investment to KRW 950 million since the initial investment of KRW 450 million in September 2023.
KALMAN is at the forefront of providing specialized unmanned robots like Pyper, designed for the inspection of Equipment Cooling Water (ECW) pipelines essential for cooling nuclear power plants (offered to Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power under the PRIME brand). Pyper is engineered to operate in radioactive conditions, allowing for safe pipeline inspections without exposing workers to radiation risks or confined space accidents. Following extensive Proof of Concept (PoC) validations with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, Pyper has been commercialized as a robust solution for pipe inspection and monitoring.
The need for unmanned robots is particularly critical in nuclear power plants, where a shutdown for pipeline inspections can result in financial losses amounting to billions of KRW per day. KALMAN, leveraging its in-house capabilities to manufacture and produce quadruped robots, plans to not only cater to the domestic market but also to export these solutions to nuclear facilities worldwide. Additionally, through a collaboration with Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Korea’s Technology and Information Promotion Agency (TIPA) in 2021, KALMAN developed Robster, an underwater robot gearing up for commercial release. Equipped with robotic arms, Robster is an unmanned underwater robot designed for the inspection and monitoring of water tank facilities within nuclear power plants, and is versatile enough to be deployed for various underwater tasks across different sectors.
Minsoo Kim, a director at The Invention Lab, commented, “KALMAN stands out as a domestic industrial robot startup with the capability to produce its own high-performance actuators. It is developing a wide array of unmanned robot solutions, including PRIME for nuclear power plant pipeline inspection and monitoring, the marine unmanned robot Robster for underwater missions, and the quadruped robot DEXTER. This positions KALMAN to be highly sought after in both the domestic and global markets.”
Junho Kim, CEO of KALMAN, underlined, “KALMAN is involved in the entire process from robot development to on-site installation and consulting. The specialized industrial robot sector, encompassing product design, development, extensive on-site PoC validations, installation, and ongoing maintenance, represents an industry that can generate stable revenues over a long duration once the installation is complete.”
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