1. Neurala
Company Backgrounder
“Having brains,” means different things to different people. In school, it means
you have the smarts to excel. For Walking Dead fans, it means you have an army of
well-nourished zombies. For Neurala, brains are complicated biological processors
that humans have and robots don’t – for now. Building brains for bots is Neurala’s
calling. Since the company’s inception in 2006, Neurala has developed a number of
technologies for NASA and the U.S. Air Force to help robots and drones learn from
their environments, as humans do, rather than through external programming.
The only robotics company devoted solely to software, Neurala is developing
an app that will enable users to teach robots how to complete tasks and react to their
surroundings. Currently, bots only have the ability to navigate terrain with human
input. Neurala’s goal is to eliminate the need for human control by using direction
and pattern detection. For example, a robot will, in the future, be able to navigate a
series of obstacles from point A to point B by assessing hindrances and navigating
around them on the most direct route. While this goal may seem lofty, Neurala has
already demonstrated its ability to accomplish autonomous navigation through its
work on NASA’s Mars Rover, which has been navigating the alien landscape using
Neurala technology.
Another capability Neurala hopes to make standard for robots in the near
future is the ability to see and judge distances the same way humans do. Currently,
robots use a sort of “laser beam vision,” meaning that they use beams of light to
scan the area in front of them and judge the terrain or detect obstacles. The new
standard for robotics vision is called optic flow, which uses cameras and passive

2. sensors to see and react to changes in the environment, including distant or moving
objects.
Neurala’s next challenge is taking its research and progress to the consumer
market. The solution - a user-friendly, engaging, new technology - comes in the form
of an app that is compatible with previously existing hardware. The first installment of
the app will control Romo robots - small, easy-to-program, household bots that users
can interact with through their iPhones. The app will turn Romo into more than just
an alarm clock. It will adopt some of the capabilities of more complex machines such
as pattern and facial recognition as well as the ability to lock onto a moving target.
Neurala’s app will allow users to program their bot with capabilities far beyond those
currently on the market.
Romo robots target users from 8 years old and up, but Neurala has an adult
audience in mind for their long-term strategy. Neurala’s Romo-compatible app will
make the robot technology more accessible, while introducing consumers to
Neurala, and laying the groundwork for a series of consumer robotic products. The
next step for the company is to devise a way to remove humans from the equation
entirely and to create a mechanical brain that can learn on its own without
programming. Future versions of Neurala’s app will pair with a more advanced
category of robots.
Although Neurala is a software company, CEO Max Versace’s roots are in
neuroscience. Versace is a visionary and a leader in the artificial intelligence
industry, and hopes to one day create a bot brain capable of flawlessly mimicking
human brain functions. His contributions hold implications for the futures of more
industries than just space exploration and military drones. Versace has contributed

3. to top industry news outlets including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) Spectrum, Geek Magazine, and CNN.
Assisting Versace in software wizardry, CTO Anatoly Gorshechnikov is the
spatial navigation mastermind for Neura’s bots. His work in studying the neural
processes in rodents has allowed him to apply an understanding of navigation and
thought patterns to robotics and artificial brain modeling. Gorshechnikov is a pioneer
in general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) processing, a
method of applying computer graphics software to neural modeling.
Neurala’s VP of operations, Heather Ames, is a neuroscience researcher whose
focus on learning, hearing, and speaking will greatly impact the way the U.S. medical
community views those processes. Ames, in addition to her innovations with
Neurala, is the executive director of Boston University’s Center of Excellence for
Learning in Education, Science, and Technology (CELEST).
Roger Matus has extensive business experience with a wide array of
positions throughout his career. As an entrepreneur, Matus founded, marketed, and
sold InBoxer, a highly innovative email filtering software. As VP of marketing for
Dragon Systems, he helped launch Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the world’s most
popular voice recognition software. Later, he joined TechStars in Cambridge, Mass.
as a mentor to Neurala. Matus was invited to join the Neurala team upon the
company’s completion of TechStars.
Neurala was named one of the 50 most influential companies by The
Robotics Business Review for its work in increasing the speed of robotic neurological
functions. The company also received the NASA Small business Technology
Transfer (STTR) award in 2011 to work toward the development of brains for
autonomous robots dealing with unknown, possibly hostile conditions.

4. Neurala hopes to soon expand its work to developing a cloud consciousness for its
bots. A robot brain cloud means that each bot with Neurala tech will share one
common body of knowledge. If one robot encounters an obstacle in a certain
location, every other Neurala robot will have access to that information, and will be
able to learn from the first robot’s struggle. This also means that if a robot is
damaged, it will not lose its previously stored memory. Instead, the cloud brain will
provide memory back-up as well as additional processing power that the robot itself
does not possess.
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For more information:
Contact at Client
Roger Matus
617-418-6161
rmatus@zoho.com