Are we on the brink of a robotics revolution? That's what numerous media outlets asked last December when Google acquired eight robotics companies that specialize in such innovations as manipulation, vision, and humanoid robots.
Among those acquisitions was MIT spinout Meka Robotics, co-founded by Aaron Edsinger SM '01, PhD '07 and Jeff Weber, a former research engineer in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.
Founded in 2006, Meka was an early creator of "compliant" humanoid robots that now work safely alongside humans in everyday environments—including factories and cramped research labs.
Based on the co-founders' work at MIT, Meka's sleek robotics hardware included adult-size arms and hands, as well as heads, torsos, and full-body systems with advanced control innovations, such as spring-based Series Elastic Actuators (SEAs) that provide torque control and measurements at each joint. All of Meka's robots run off Meka M3 and Robot Operating System software, which allow for real-time communication.
Perhaps the company is most notable for its M1 Mobile Manipulator, a $340,000 robotic humanoid that combines all of Meka's hardware. Designed to lift and carry objects, the M1's arms move smoothly and are equipped with strong grippers and with SEAs that allow the arms to slow down upon human touch. A customizable pan-tilt head comes with a Kinect 3-D camera, along with other digital cameras, for sensing objects. Its base is an omnidirectional platform with a mechanical lift that allows the torso to move vertically.
Dozens of researchers today use Meka's robotic hardware and software in labs around the world for advanced robotics research. "These are hardware platforms for research labs to develop algorithms for mobile manipulation, social robotics, and human-robot interaction," says Edsinger, who was Meka's chief executive officer.
Google's other recent acquisitions have included MIT spinout Boston Dynamics, a military robot maker, and Redwood Robotics, a joint venture between Meka and the robotics firms Willow Garage and SRI International.
Co-founded by Edsinger, Redwood Robotics focused specifically on refining Meka's robot arms. But it has greater aims of bringing manufacturing back stateside. "Designing arms is part of the story, but the bigger product solution is to fulfill that vision," says Edsinger, now a robotics director at Google.