Inside the Startup: wheel.me

Wheel.me can turn almost any object into an autonomous robot. With a wide range of use cases, their Wheel.me Genius can move just about anything, and revamp automated material handling in manufacturing, supply chains, logistics, warehouse operations, and elsewhere. By offering autonomous wheels as a service, Wheel.me is on its way to disrupt the entire robotics industry.

With the idea of literally reinventing the wheel, wheel.me began its journey in 2014, and has been gaining serious momentum for the last couple of years. They’re finalists for our electronica Fast Forward awards in 2022.

While we can’t wait to see their Genius in action at electronica 2022, we decided to get them warmed up with some burning questions, so we reached out to Kai Kreos-Nemcock, Sales Manager for Norway-based Wheel.me.

Brian Tristam Williams: You’ve been preparing this product to take the market by storm for several years. In your opinion, in what area is your autonomous wheel solution needed the most? 

Kai Kreos-Nemcock: While the key benefit of the wheel.me autonomous wheels is that you can turn almost anything autonomous across any industry vertical, we see the most significant benefits today in manufacturing, especially the automotive industry. Even though the sector was among the first to start implementing automation solutions, they still rely a lot on manual material handling, which results in higher costs, lower efficiency, and health- and safety-related issues.

While many of the manufacturing companies try to take advantage of traditional AGV/AMR solutions, they often struggle to build a good business case around the solutions due to the high initial investment, high maintenance needs, and requirements for the infrastructure. With the Wheel.me solution, they can keep what they have, take their existing customized racks, trolleys, or carts, and make them run autonomously without changing their entire infrastructure and coming up against a high initial investment cost.

Brian: What materials are they made from? Are those materials sustainable?

Kai: The robots are made from materials that are durable and sustainable. We use local manufacturers as much as possible and assemble the products on our automated assembly line in Fredrikstad, Norway.

Sustainability is a very important topic for wheel.me in general, and our customers and we are doing our utmost to focus on this — not only in product development, but also in our whole business model. We repurpose existing objects, attach the wheels to them and thus eliminate the need to throw away thousands of pieces of material handling equipment. In addition, we take back and re-use components and parts, as the wheels have a modular, click-in/click-out design.

Brian: What were the first challenges you encountered in designing your wheel? 

Kai: Our wheel has gone through several iterations over the years. It’s quite interesting to see where the company got started and how the wheel has turned smarter, better, and stronger with every new version. The version we have today has improved sensors, better navigation, better design and mechanical components, and the ability to function in real environments, navigate around obstacles and make processes more efficient. We have been collaborating closely with our customers and partners to get feedback about the product in its different iterations. Our pilot customers have opened their facilities for us to test the latest version, and this has been extremely valuable for us making a robust product that we can launch in the market.

Brian: Did supply chain delays brought on by the recent pandemic affect your operations?

Kai: Similarly to other manufacturing companies, we’ve been affected by the supply chain delays and global component shortages to a certain extent as well. We were forced to do some re-designs and adapt to the situation, but we have a strong team working on our own supply chain to ensure that we’re able to meet the big demand from our customers. Meanwhile, our commercial team is doing their best to create long-term plans together with customers to be able to deliver in a timely manner.   

Brian: Do you think the market is going to stagnate if the cost of implementing an AMR system is as high as assumed?

Kai: What we see is that while AGVs and AMRs have been around for a long time (the first AGVs were introduced around 70 years ago), the technology hasn’t really evolved enough to launch the robotics disruption that many people were expecting. Due to the high costs and rigidness of the solutions, many companies struggle to implement them, and even if they do, the AGVs/AMRs tend to be unreliable and require lots of maintenance. On the other hand, what you see is that there are a lot of new innovative robotics companies entering the market that are trying to take on this challenge.

We consider Wheel.me to be one of these companies — we’re disrupting the existing market, but also enabling a larger scope for automation. That is part of the reason the Wheel.me solution has had so much success so far — we offer something new and different, something that is much more flexible than any other solution in the market, and something that comes with low risks and reasonable costs. No automation project makes sense unless it gives the company a reasonable return on investment, higher efficiency, or other significant benefits.  

Brian: Are there some limitations in today’s AMR?  

Kai: As mentioned, today’s AMRs and AGVs still have many limitations, and we see that a lot when we visit our customers. It is still more common to see AGVs than AMRs in manufacturing facilities due to the lower cost and higher reliability, but they still require a large initial investment and the readjustment of your whole environment. Since you need to create clear paths for the robots with magnetic tapes or tags, there is no easy way to adjust the missions or change the process, which is why the whole solution lacks flexibility.  

While AMRs offer more flexibility and can move around autonomously without magnetic tapes, they are still very expensive and require an average company to switch out their whole material handling equipment chain. Thus, in many cases, it takes forever to make the adjustments, get approval on the budget, and figure out how to get a return on the investment. 

Brian: You plan to extend overseas, for example, boldly into Motor City itself — Detroit. Compared to the European market, do you have something special to take into consideration for the USA market?

Kai: We have indeed recently opened our first international office in Detroit, and the location was chosen due to its proximity to our customers and important industry verticals. While our company is based in Norway, we gathered a lot of momentum in the US market quite early on, and now it’s higher than ever. There are global megatrends that are driving the need for industrial automation, and we see these especially in the US market. The rise of e-commerce, demand for delivery speed, and the growing focus on efficiency, combined with rising wages and labor shortages, really creates a perfect environment for introducing automation.  

Since we built connections with some of the biggest global companies in the US early on, are now delivering some large installations in the area and seeing many more opportunities, so it was natural for us to move closer to them to be able to provide our RaaS (Robotics as a Service) solutions with the exceptional level of support that the customers expect. Since we have also gained a lot of traction in Germany and the surrounding areas, our next move will be to be closer to our customers there.   

Brian: How close are you to your goal of being able to produce 80,000 wheels per annum?

Kai: We opened our production facility in Norway this year and are currently scaling up to reach the full production capacity. Robots are being produced in our facilities today, and in 2023 we expect to be able to reach an annual production capacity of 35,000 robots. That being said, if the marked demand is higher than expected, we have the ability to quickly adapt and increase capacity. 80,000 wheels annually per shift (which, with three shifts a day, can be scaled to 240,000) is expected to be reached in 2024. The production line is built to be as modern as possible and takes advantage of some of the most modern automation solutions — including our own Wheel.me Genius.  

Brian: How many customers are you currently servicing? 

Kai: We are working with large companies across sectors, with projects ranging from automotive, manufacturing, logistics, to healthcare. We have some very strong partners and customers in the US, but also in Spain, Ireland, Norway, and Germany. You can read more about our customers and projects from our website at wheel.me/newsroom.

Did you know that this year at electronica 2022, we’re celebrating fast forward’s 6th anniversary? Visit the electronica fast forward booth at Hall B4.440 and get to know the next generation of start-ups and scale-ups that are about to change the world of electronics. Who knows – you might be able to see and talk to the next Wheel.me!