FORT Robotics, the trust layer for physical AI, today announced the acquisition of Mapless AI, a Boston- and Pittsburgh-based leader in vehicle teleoperation and autonomy supervision. The acquisition represents a significant commercial expansion of FORT’s Trust Platform, adding two critical new capabilities: remote human-in-the-loop teleoperation and onboard active safety. By integrating these technologies, FORT expands its market offering from safety-certified machine control to a comprehensive architecture for supervised autonomy.
“The Physical AI market is a multi-billion-dollar economic engine, but its full potential can only be unlocked if machines are trustworthy enough to operate in real-world human environments,” said Samuel Reeves, CEO of FORT Robotics. “The robotics industry is at a critical crossroads where impressive demos are everywhere, but scalability remains rare. Acquiring Mapless AI expands our platform to directly meet this vital need, allowing FORT to deliver the proactive safety frameworks our customers are asking for. We are building the foundational trust system to ensure that as robots become more autonomous, safety is an accelerator rather than a bottleneck.”
Building Trust in Physical AI: From Safe Control to Supervised Autonomy
FORT has long been the industry standard for safety-certified control, providing autonomous systems with the essential hardware and software backbone required to mitigate real-world operational risk. The addition of Mapless AI’s technology stack advances that foundation by introducing two major market solutions:
- Human-in-the-Loop from Anywhere (Remote Teleoperation): The platform now enables seamless remote teleoperation across long distances, enabling an off-site specialist to safely monitor and operate vehicles or machine systems from anywhere. This capability addresses a primary request that FORT hears from enterprise fleet managers: the ability to maintain a reliable human-in-the-loop safety net for autonomous operations without placing workers in high-risk zones.
- Onboard Active Safety (Environmental Sensing): The addition of onboard perception technology enables machines to actively detect, anticipate, and respond to their environments in real time. This predictive approach allows autonomous vehicles to execute smart, real-time planning and contingency maneuvers, a meaningful leap beyond traditional reactive safety architectures.
By merging these capabilities, the acquisition transitions the FORT platform into an intelligent, proactive system where autonomous machines can not only communicate safely but also actively read their environments, anticipate potential hazards, and execute real-time operational decisions on the fly. A single off-site operator can safely monitor and intervene across multiple vehicles from anywhere, completely decoupling human workers from high-risk environments while keeping meaningful oversight intact.
A Powerhouse of Automotive and Deep-Tech Expertise
The Mapless AI team, led by founders Philipp Robbel, PhD (MIT), and Jeffrey Kane Johnson, PhD (Indiana University), draws on deep roots in automotive leadership, including Bosch, Apple, Uber, Aptiv and nuTonomy. Their rare combination of automotive functional safety expertise and real-world robotics execution gives FORT a team uniquely equipped to advance the supervised autonomy capabilities the market demands. The acquisition positions FORT to accelerate its expansion into complex real-world environments, including construction, logistics, defense, last-mile delivery, and beyond.
“We founded Mapless to build the core safety layer robots need to operate effectively in complex, real-world environments. The reality is that for robots to work closely with humans and valuable infrastructure, they must be smart enough to understand and anticipate risk,” said Philipp Robbel, Co-Founder of Mapless AI. “Joining the FORT family allows us to bring our safety-first vision to a much larger platform, accelerating the type of products that will define the next decade of industrial automation and physical AI.”
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