Humanity need robots. We build robots.
The Reason
Human prosperity over the millennia has been driven by our ability to transform energy. From wood to fire, from atoms to industry. To improve the human condition is to take novel ways to do work that we did by hand, or never could before, and use robots to do it for us. A car is a robot. A fridge is a robot. Lawnmowers, screwdrivers, The Space Shuttle, and your friendly humanoid. The purpose is to free ourselves from tyranny of dangerous labor and commit to higher pursuits, like to explore, and to love. I don't need to wax poetic about the necessity, it is self evident. We need robots at home, on the factory floor, in the streets, under the ocean, and in the heavens. And we need to build them now.
Why Now?
The next generation of industry is being built before our eyes. The future is here but it is not evenly distributed. When you want to make a robot you need to get parts shipped from overseas which takes weeks, and can often take days more to calibrate and be made useful. "Clean, idiomatic, embedded code" is unicorn rare so it requires even rarer expertise to work through. These roadblocks will ensure that this critical industry will be built elsewhere, and take weeks to be shipped.
Why Actuators?
These are the building blocks of all robots. The basic unit upon which the creativity of the roboticist is built. Getting these components made the right way is critical. From soup to nuts. Mass, efficiency, and controls, all are necessary to give engineers maximum freedom in making useful products. There is no affordable actuator on the market that has a good developer experience. Saturn Robotics will build that actuator. We will build the whole family of actuators with and SDK built on Clean, idiomatic, embedded code to those who need it, and root access to those who want it. And we will build it in America.
Why in America?
I have been asked again and again why I'm making these actuators in America. The reason is simple -- you cannot surrender the production stack for what will become the base of a $100B industry without also losing out on the top. If you spend weeks waiting for your components to ship you will iterate slower, be a lot less efficient, and eventually fall behind. To get sufficient reps in, to harness the intellectual might of American industry, universities, and even schools,
You need the freedom to break some hardware and start again immediately.