Rise of the compliant machines

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.