From a degree thesis to a start-up: Five young engineers want to take a sewer rehabilitation robot to the market—with a new approach, inspired by nature.
Released by
maxon
08.07.19
Earthworms have a talent for movement. With their complex circumferential and longitudinal muscles, they are able to crawl forward and backward. It should be possible to apply this perfect natural movement concept in roboticsor that’s what a young Austrian engineering student thought when he started his graduate thesis in 2014. In 2016, a team that now numbered five people finally presented the functional prototype of a robot that moved like an earthworm. The construction consisted of several segments of variable diameter. Only the segments that are shrunk, and therefore do not touch the ground, move.
The project won several awards for innovation and gained some media attention. Then the investors started calling. “Launching the company was only a small step afterwards,” said Matthias Müller, who is now the CEO of the startup Foccus Innovation.
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