SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Technical Abstract Overview: Apptronik’s all-electric, next generation collaborative robots unite novel kinematics and powerful artificial intelligence into safe, lightweight, energy-efficient, mobile manipulation platforms that operate in unstructured and dynamic environments, outdoors, and off-road – bringing robust automation capabilities from the factory floor out into the field. The system can operate in a fully autonomous mode, a collaborative mode, and a simple or "degraded" mode. Technical Merit: Apptronik’s novel integrated robotic actuator hardware and control technology spun out from the Human Centered Robotics Laboratory (HCRL) at the University of Texas (UT) and as part of the NASA team in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) robotics challenge (DRC). Apptronik holds 7 patents related to our unique kinematic approach. Apptronik’s concept revisits the parallelogram four-bar mechanism with an elastic element – essentially a spring lamp. The challenge was two-fold: scaling for large payloads and adapting to rapidly changing payloads, which is where the disruptive innovations come in. The spring element uses energy from the physics of springs instead of applied electrical or hydraulic energy, resulting in a much lighter manipulator than the typical COTS arm. The light weight makes for a safer system to operate near and with people, it also requires far less power, and can therefore be very mobile. This system can be mounted to any cargo vehicle and run off that vehicles existing electrical system.
