Arculus

Market position

arculus operates in intralogistics and warehouse automation as the mobile-robot engineering unit of Jungheinrich, a Hamburg-based family-owned material-handling group founded in 1953 that employed 18,000 people and generated EUR 3.81 billion (USD 4.37 billion) in revenue in 2020 and is represented in 40 countries via direct sales companies and about 80 more through partners. Jungheinrich positioned the acquisition as expanding its automation expertise in the autonomous mobile robot segment, complementing its goods-to-person systems and existing digital fleet management products under its "2025+" strategy. arculus' software received the 2021 IFOY Award for best intralogistics software.

In-house development of the entire stack—mechanics, design, electronics, embedded software and the fleet software—with series production and testing on site; component reuse across hardware generations decouples software features from specific robot models. The self-designed RCU allows electronics to be tailored to individual customer requirements. Fleet software is vendor-neutral through VDA 5050, allowing third-party robots to operate in the same fleet, and arculus engineers contribute to developing the standard itself.

Technology

arculus covers the full stack from mechanics and electronics to software. Hardware includes the arculee AMR family and the in-house RCU control unit built on a self-designed PCB, optimised for low idle power consumption with a remotely restartable deep-sleep mode, plus brake-state detection for safety in mixed-traffic environments and reduced brake power draw. Robots use tagless free navigation, removing the earlier need for physical markers at customer sites, and the arculee "brain" has been migrated to ROS 2 to separate autonomy and platform layers, add lifecycle management and ease adaptation to new hardware. Over-the-air updates cover backend services and most robot project features. The primary software language is Rust, chosen for speed and compile-time error checking, with Angular for user interfaces and BabylonJS for 3D visualisation; a proprietary component called Crashdump handles high-load log collection, encryption, storage and querying. Development runs on two-week sprints, with roughly 12-month hardware roll-out cycles and four-week software increment roll-outs. Fleet software complies with VDA 5050, and arculus engineers participate in refining the standard.

Go-to-market

Solutions are taken to market through Jungheinrich, whose website arculus directs customers to for purchasing; arculus also uses a portable demo kit containing a laptop, router, connectivity gear and an AMR to run mapping, layout setup and workflows at exhibitions and customer sites.

Industrial and warehouse operators automating intralogistics and material handling, with a historical focus on automotive manufacturers; the company provided a proof of concept for a premium automotive manufacturer in 2018 and one automotive manufacturer adopted its Fleet software as the standard system for controlling AGVs across its production facilities.

Geography

Headquartered in Munich, Germany, at Balanstrasse 73 on the Neue Balan campus in Munich East, with an approximately 3,000 sqm workspace including an electronics lab, robotics testing area and production facility. Earlier coverage associated the company with Ingolstadt and Stuttgart. Its parent Jungheinrich is based in Hamburg and represented in 40 countries directly and around 80 further countries through partners.

History

Founded in 2016 in Germany with a modular-production concept for automotive manufacturing, arculus built its first AMR prototype in 2017 and provided a proof of concept for a premium automotive manufacturer in 2018. It raised a Series A round reported at EUR 16 million in May 2020, led by Atomico with participation from Visionaries Club and existing investor La Famiglia, and integrated the VDA 5050 interoperability standard the same year. In 2021 its software won the IFOY Award for best intralogistics software, and in November 2021 Jungheinrich AG acquired the company; the purchase price was not disclosed. Since then arculus has operated as part of Jungheinrich, developing its intralogistics automation portfolio in-house from Munich.