Sheffield-based startup brings robotics development onto the browser for mainstream developers
OLO Robotics has completed its commercial launch, announcing new manufacturing and distribution partnerships with Deep Robotics, inMotion Robotic, and Fiction Lab as robot companies move to make their hardware accessible to mainstream software teams, not only specialist roboticists.
By integrating OLO’s ROS2-native platform with quadrupeds and mobile robots, these partners are positioning robots as part of the existing software stack rather than separate, bespoke projects.
OLO provides an accessibility layer on top of ROS2, bringing the full robotics development environment into the browser, including cloud simulation, AI-assisted coding, visualisation and sim-to-real deployment. This enables organisations to build and deploy robotic systems without requiring in-house ROS2 expertise, making it easy for the user to instantly access the ROS2 ecosystem of robots. The platform supports JavaScript and Python, requires no local installation, and connects directly to existing ROS2 robots and drivers.
“The industry has spent a decade talking about a skills shortage as if the only answer is to train more roboticists,” said Nick Thompson, co-founder and CEO of OLO Robotics. “What we see is a different picture: the expertise is already inside warehouses, factories and labs, but the infrastructure was never built for those teams.”
Poland-based Fiction Lab’s LEO Rover, a modular platform used by universities and engineering teams, can now be ordered with OLO as an optional bundle. Customers can start programming against a simulated LEO Rover in OLO’s cloud environment before hardware ships, using the same browser-based tools they will later use on the physical robot.
“Fiction Lab and OLO share a vision that robotics should be accessible to anyone with something worth building,” said Piotr Szlachcic, CEO of Fiction Lab. “Teams can start in simulation straight away, and when the hardware arrives, they can move directly into deployment without additional setup or specialist onboarding.”
China’s Deep Robotics and Germany’s inMotion Robotic have also worked with OLO to ensure their robots operate on the platform from first use, removing the need for separate integration projects. For manufacturers, this approach enables ROS2-compatible systems to be deployed without custom driver development, opening their platforms to software teams and integrators who already have the capability to build on them.
“Our hardware is capable of operating in some of the most demanding environments in the world,” said Yatao Zhang, director of Europe and Africa at Deep Robotics. “Because OLO is built on ROS2, our robots work with the platform from day one, without additional integration work.”Kai Leuze, CEO of inMotion Robotic, said: “At inMotion Robotic we work with customers who want to build on our solutions, not just around them. ROS2 support removes the need for custom driver development or SDKs, making our robots immediately usable for research teams, integrators and developers across Europe.”
Eleanor Tang-Smith, co-founder and COO of OLO Robotics, said: “When you sit with customers, they rarely talk about a ‘skills crisis’. They talk about ideas they can’t get to, projects that stall, and teams who give up because the tools get in the way. Our focus is removing that friction so the people closest to the problem can build and deploy the systems they’ve been imagining.”
