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World-class, cutting-edge tech firm born as global
Tech firm born as global
Kudan was founded in 2011 in Bristol, UK, as a company working in Augmented Reality (AR), where Artificial Perception (AP) is deeply involved. While developing Augmented Reality (AR), the company shifted its focus to Artificial Perception (AP) as the underpinning technology in order to capture more impact on multiple industries, and we went into in-depth research and development of the core technology itself, before going public in Japan.
The subsequent acquisition of Artisense, a German company also focused on the field of artificial perception, further globalised the organisation. Today, the majority of R&D is still carried out in Europe, where the majority of the company’s employees are based. Operations are also spread across Asia, Europe and North America, making Kudan a small but truly global operation for a start-up.
Europe is the global centre of excellence for research and development in Artificial Perception (and its key technology, SLAM), so it is crucial to have our R&D roots in Europe. Universities and research institutes in Germany, the UK and Switzerland are all top research performers, and elite technical talent is concentrated in the region where Kudan has its R&D base.
And Artisense, rightly acquired by Kudan, was founded by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), which is the global leader in SLAM research. This acquisition further strengthens our global best-in-class research and development capabilities.
Acquisition of technologies and the world’s leading experts
Prof Daniel Cremers, a world-leading guru in SLAM research and founder of Artisense, was a key figure in the acquisition. He was also a principal professor at the Technical University of Munich and a recipient of the Leibniz Prize, the highest award in German academia.
Although computer science is not a Nobel Prize subject, Professor Kramers’ achievements, such as his article citation index, are truly Nobel Prize level and, in comparison with Japanese researchers, are in the same field as, for example, Professor Shinya Yamanaka, who won the Nobel Prize for IPS cells.
One of Prof Cremers’ major achievements is Direct SLAM, a next-generation innovative technology that is dense, robust to environmental changes and highly stable, of which Kudan has exclusive commercial rights following its acquisition of Artisense.
The adoption in Intel products is a “world-first industry milestone”
The world’s most advanced technological capabilities that have been built up in this way are gradually being recognized by the technology industry. For example, Kudan’s SLAM technology has become the world’s first commercial technology to be fully adopted on a major semiconductor company’s platform in 2022.
Specifically, Kudan technology has been adopted in the mapping and utilisation module at the core of Intel’s robotics package, making “Kudan inside” into “Intel inside”. Starting with this first industry milestone, Kudan aims to continue to lead the industry in commercial technology.
