The Story Behind TUGBOT

RoboSavvy was founded by robotics guru and enthusiast Limor Schweitzer in London, UK as a leading e-commerce of robotics for the hobby, education and research markets.

Back in 2013 after successfully becoming a market leader in robotics online sales RoboSavvy decided to expand its offering and opened an R&D Lab and manufacturing facility in Lisbon, Portugal, also moving its HQ from the UK to Portugal.

From Portugal, Robosavvy developed several humanoid and wheeled robots for corporations, universities and research centres. After the completion of an autonomous robot made for the National Geographic Channel back in 2016 to photograph and film wild animals in the savannas, the team spotted an opportunity to use the legacy of the previous development to design an autonomous mobile robot for intra-logistics operation that uses wheeled vehicles for material handling.

Following extensive market research the findings concluded that the main obstacle for adoption was the fact that each company uses a different type of cart and no vendor had a flexible or universal solution to pull any cart. Vendors pushed back this critical problem to clients either suggesting a purchase of new carts specifically made for their robots or to put mechanical adapters to facilitate engagement – neither are really customer friendly nor scalable.

Then the RoboSavvy R&D team had that “Eureka” moment to focus on creating a robot that can pull any and all carts. After a couple of years of intense development in November 2017 TUGBOT debuted at CTT Correios in Portugal becoming the world’s first and only autonomous mobile robot that can pull any cart.

Since then TUGBOT has been deployed in more than 12 countries, from Japan to the USA, drawing the attention of the market and investment groups. In December 2022, Robosavvy Lda. became part of a large investment group changing its legal name to Robosavvy S.A. and rebranding as TUGBOT. 

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