Eka Robotics raises $150 million at a $1.45 billion valuation: its robotic hand grasps objects by force signals, not just by image
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
Robots that feel force may learn to pick up very different objects without lengthy setup.
The Series A round was led by a16z and F-Prime. The founders are MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and Tuomas Haarnoja, a former Google DeepMind researcher. Instead of the usual vision-language-action model, the company is building a vision-force-action model, trained in a physics simulator with reinforcement learning, without human demonstrations. According to TechCrunch, the hand picks about 1,500 objects weighing up to 1 kg per hour (a human, 600), grasp reliability is above 95%, and fragile items such as raspberries are not damaged. Professor Kris Hauser (University of Illinois) noted the "humanness" of the movements. The industrial pilots are confidential.
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