Municipal Robotics provides the Rover autonomous sidewalk‑clearing robot, a self‑charging platform that can swap plow, auger, or pressure‑wash tools and operate up to 50 mi per night with centimeter‑level positioning using edge AI and RTK‑GPS. The system includes a cloud dashboard for fleet scheduling and a parametric CAD suite (vcad) for customizing hardware, both offered under open‑source licenses with commercial support.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Municipal public works teams must manually clear sidewalks of snow, debris, and grime, which requires significant labor hours, equipment fleets, and seasonal staffing. Inconsistent coverage and high operational costs limit the ability to maintain safe pedestrian pathways, especially in regions with heavy snowfall.
Solution
Municipal Robotics delivers the Rover autonomous sidewalk‑clearing platform, a self‑charging robot that can traverse up to 50 mi per night while swapping tools (plow, auger, pressure‑wash) without human intervention. The vehicle leverages an NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX edge AI processor, stereo vision, and RTK‑GPS/IMU fusion to achieve centimeter‑level positioning and obstacle avoidance within a 1.5 m safety radius. A 48 V 40 Ah LiFePO₄ battery provides 4–8 hours of runtime on a single charge, enabling continuous operation through active snowfall. Operators interact via a cloud‑connected dashboard that monitors fleet health, schedules routes, and logs performance metrics. In parallel, vcad offers an MIT‑licensed, parametric CAD suite that integrates AI‑driven design optimization, physics‑based simulation, and direct export to STEP or slicer formats, allowing municipalities or third‑party integrators to customize hardware or develop new tool attachments. Both the robot firmware and CAD source are openly available on GitHub, supporting self‑build deployments or commercial purchases backed by licensing and support agreements.
Target Audience
Primary customers are municipal public works departments and city‑level maintenance agencies responsible for sidewalk upkeep, as well as engineering firms that design or retrofit municipal equipment.
Features
- Jetson Orin NX (30 TOPS) on‑board AI for real‑time perception and path planning
- Triple IMX291 stereo cameras delivering depth maps and wide‑angle coverage
- RTK‑GPS + IMU fusion for sub‑centimeter localization and lane‑level accuracy
- 48 V 40 Ah LiFePO₄ battery pack delivering 4–8 h continuous operation, single‑charge nightly cycles
- Hot‑swap CAN‑bus tool interface supporting plow, auger, and pressure‑wash modules without fleet downtime
- Vision‑based safety radius (1.5 m) with deterministic geometry‑only stop logic and 250 ms watchdog e‑stop
- LTE + Wi‑Fi connectivity with 100–250 ms latency for remote fleet management and OTA updates
- vcad parametric modeling engine with AI‑assisted feature generation, multi‑physics simulation, and export pipelines to STEP, STL, and slicer G‑code
- Open‑source firmware, schematics, and mechanical CAD hosted under an MIT license for community contributions or proprietary extensions