ZIVA Robotics

Find out more about our new member: ZIVA Robotics, formerly known as Casta Spes Technologies.

Quick overview of your company?

ZIVA Robotics build robotic vehicles that detect threats (human or vehicle) using machine vision, saving time and money associated with false alarms or missed breaches, filling the gap between static cameras and expensive manned patrols.

What problem(s) are you trying to solve, any examples of progress to date?

All commercial properties secure their perimeters with a mixture of fixed cameras and manned patrols. As perimeter sizes grow, so does the cost of securing them, resulting in blind spots by existing methods, which are expensive and sometimes unaccountable. Having 1 security guard on-site 24-7 costs a minimum of £12.5k per month.

The current problems experienced by our end-clients are; the lack of recorded data on site patrols, the accountability of their manned guards and the ineffectiveness of guards as deterrents. The time taken to visual verify an alarm or incident is lengthy and can result in false alarms or missed breaches.

For complex or constantly changes sites, such as construction projects or ports, covering blind spots can be expensive and difficult to guarantee as fixed CCTV cameras are regularly damaged during decommissioning or whilst moving locations. Existing temporary CCTV towers are cheaper to rent but timely to install and require a vehicle to move.

What are your thoughts about the company’s vision and direction, and your role in helping achieve them?

Our vision has always been to ‘empower humanity through autonomy’ by enabling access to robotics.

Our mission is 'to make the world a safer place with robotics' - starting with security.

By deploying robots into areas that are undesirable to work in, labour intensive or hazardous to our health - we will reduce the risk of anyone being harmed whilst improving the accuracy and accountability of real-world data collection. This data will enable end-users, such as property owners, to analyse potential security risks, detect faults in their infrastructure and could even help farmers improve their crop yield.

What are the biggest challenges on the horizon?

Our biggest hurdle has always been funding. We are an early stage (high-risk) hardware robotics company targeting the security sector - this doesn’t really appeal to many investors in Scotland.

However, we have been honoured by the investors and industry organisations who have supported us - leveraging their experiences in cybersecurity, procurement and security installation to help us build ZIVA Robotics!

What are your goals for the next 6-12 months?

We are conducting trials with various end-clients in the construction and logistics industries to build trust and begin providing security coverage with ZIVA. In 2020 we will be launching a suite of software features including autonomous navigation to augment patrols.

When you tell people about your job and company, what’s one thing that surprises them, or gets them excited about the work you do?

We build robots - it's as simple as that!

We design, build and test ZIVA ourselves - which is super rewarding. Our team members work directly with the end-users and operators to inform their design choices from day 1 - ensuring we have the best possible outcome. Not to mention, driving a robot at work every day is a lot of fun!

Is there a way people can get involved with your work?

If you want to rent ZIVA for data collection purposes or analyse some of the data we collect (video or performance) - please get in touch!

We are constantly looking for new technology partners to work with - whether you are an academic with a collaborative project or a solutions provider that would like to use our robot for a specific use-case. ZIVA is getting better by the day and it's all due to the various projects we undertake, adding new, modular sensors and collecting data.