Cogniac, a startup developing technology for visual task automation, today raised $10 million. CEO Chuck Myers says the funds will be put toward hiring staff, expanding sales and marketing, and supporting the company’s growth.
Tasks in manufacturing, one of Cogniac’s key markets, can be error-prone when humans are in the loop. A study from Vanson Bourne found that 23% of all unplanned downtime in manufacturing is the result of human error, compared with rates as low as 9% in other segments. The $327.6 million Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft was destroyed because of a failure to properly convert between units of measurement. And one pharma company reported a misunderstanding that resulted in an alert ticket being overridden, which cost four days on the production line at £200,000 ($253,946) per day.