"Rethinking Roofing with Robotics"
Brooklyn-based startup developing autonomous roof shingle installation robots for residential and multifamily roofing contractors.
Renovate Robotics is a robotics startup founded in 2021 and headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard's New Lab facility — an 85,000-square-foot innovation campus purpose-built for hardware companies. The company is developing Rufus, the world's first autonomous robot designed to install asphalt shingles on residential and multifamily rooftops, bringing robotic automation to one of the last major segments of construction that has remained almost entirely manual.
The U.S. roofing industry faces a severe and structurally worsening labor shortage, with tens of thousands of roofing jobs unfilled annually. Roofing is physically demanding, carried out in extreme heat and at elevation, with high rates of injury and turnover. Renovate Robotics was founded specifically to address this gap by automating shingle installation — reducing the physical burden on human workers, enabling contractors to complete more jobs with smaller crews, and ultimately expanding the capacity of the roofing workforce without requiring proportional increases in labor supply.
Rufus operates as a gantry-like system that attaches to the roof and traverses across the roofing surface along X and Y axes. As it moves, the robot positions and secures individual shingles using computer vision guidance, which ensures consistent placement, alignment, and fastening quality that meets or exceeds industry standards. The system is designed to handle the variation inherent in real-world roofing conditions, including irregular roof geometries and transitions between roof planes.
Since its public debut in 2023, Rufus has undergone rapid and substantial iteration. Performance has nearly quadrupled since initial testing, and the latest generation — Rufus V1 — is approximately 50 percent faster than a skilled human installer, while being substantially lighter than earlier prototypes to simplify logistics for crew deployment on multifamily projects. The system is designed to be modular, with a roadmap that includes shingle tear-off, shingle cutting, solar bracket installation for racking systems, and eventually automated solar shingle installation.
Renovate Robotics has raised approximately $3.25 million in funding from investors including HAX, SOSV, Climate Capital, AlleyCorp, and Newlab. Strategic investors include NOVA by Saint-Gobain — the corporate venture arm of Saint-Gobain, parent company of roofing manufacturer CertainTeed — and roofing distribution leader Beacon, both of which have made equity investments and entered commercial partnership agreements. These partnerships provide direct access to the supply chain, distribution networks, and commercial relationships needed to scale Rufus deployment across the North American roofing market. The company's long-term business model targets a Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) structure, under which Rufus units will be leased to roofing contractors on a per-project or subscription basis.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
Autonomous gantry robot that installs asphalt roof shingles 50% faster than a human using computer vision guidance.
Contact Renovate Robotics
WEBSITE
https://www.renovaterobotics.com/HEADQUARTERS
United States
Company Facts
Founded
2021
Primary Role
Manufacturer
Company Size
-
Primary Region
North America
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
-
Funding Total
-
