Summer Robotics closed a series A financing round to accelerate development and commercialization of the company’s Kortx machine vision platform. Summer Robotics said it has launched pilot programs with automotive manufacturers and is expanding into additional industries seeking advanced automation. In addition to the funding, which was led by Applied Ventures, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, the company appointed Rick Van Valkenburg CCO. Valkenburg has nearly 30 years of experience in automation and machine vision, including 28 years at Perceptron Inc., where he held leadership roles driving commercial growth and global partnerships. In a separate development, the company announced a strategic R&D and commercial partnership with VoxelSensors to create advanced perception technology for robotics. The partnership will integrate VoxelSensors’ LYRA sensors, which use single photon active event sensors (SPAES) technology, with Summer Robotics’ Kortx AI vision streaming system. The integration is expected to create a fast, low power, and low-latency machine vision perception system for robotics. To accelerate innovation and market entry, the companies will establish dedicated development teams in both Brussels and Silicon Valley. Summer Robotics' Kortx platform enables robots to operate in dynamic, unstructured environments, under a wide range of lighting conditions, unlocking automation capabilities in manufacturing, logistics, as well as humanoid applications, according to the company. The platform combines event-based sensors with continuous laser scanning to create laser-event sensing technology.