Sarcos Robotics and Technology, one of an increasing number of firms addressing the growing market for exoskeleton robots and related products, said it recently completed assembly of the beta version of its Guardian XT teleoperated dexterous mobile robotic avatar system.
The company is now conducting internal beta tests on the Guardian XT, which is the upper-body variant of the firm’s full-body Guardian XO battery-powered industrial exoskeleton. Sarcos is hoping to put the XT in the hands of customers for their own trials by the middle of this year.
The timing for exoskeletons that augment and assist humans in work activities could not be better, as worker shortages are affecting just about every industry one can think of. As Ben Wolff, executive chairman of Sarcos, put it in a presentation at the Needham & Co. Growth Conference this month, “How does work get done when there are not enough workers to go around?”
Sarcos itself has experienced the effects of the worker shortage first-hand, with Wolff saying during the presentation that Sarcos is “under-staffed by about 30” amid the most challenging hiring conditions Wolff he has ever seen. He described this as a “risk factor” for the company which had its IPO last fall after a merger with special purpose acquisition company Rotor Acquisition Corp.
As Sarcos advances along its timeline to market, the company also is operating in an increasingly crowded market space that also features companies such as German Bionic, which brought its AI-powered exoskeleton to CES 2022 earlier this month.
Exoskeletons are being positioned for applications ranging from healthcare–helping wheelchair-bound people walk, for example–to outdoor and industrial labor. In the latter use cases, they have the potential to help workforces do more with fewer workers. While “95% of robotics companies are focused on developing robots for repetitive tasks,” Wolff said, Sarcos is aiming for the “gap between what humans can do and what robots can do,” such as tasks in which human oversight and decision-making skills are necessary, but that may be too dangerous or complex for a single human to perform alone.
The beta version of the Guardian XT robot incorporates several technical improvements from its alpha version of the robot, Sarcos said, including additional degrees of freedom in the wrist, upgraded software, more advanced end-effectors, and enhancements to the proprietary SenSuit motion capture controller.
Regarding the customer trials of the beta unit, Wolff said at the conference that those tests, involving “a couple handfuls of companies” from a variety of industries, will last from two to four weeks and are scheduled to begin this summer.