MACAU, China — At the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems here this week, Motiv Robotics Inc. will be showing its RoboMantis mobile robot platform. The Pasadena, Calif.-based company said RoboMantis has newly enhanced capabilities and is available now.

Motiv Robotics was founded in 2015. It licensed technology from the RoboSimian built for the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

Motiv makes robotics grippers, manipulator arms, and RoboMantis, which has up to four limbs and two manipulators and can carry a variety of payloads. The modular robot was first displayed at CES 2018, and it can carry gear, additional sensors, or mission-specific equipment.

The mobile robot’s “on-board computation with an advanced GPU enables rapid SLAM operations, as well as affordance template-based semi-autonomous task execution,” said Motiv. The semi-autonomous system is designed for applications such as academic research, agriculture, defense, industrial inspection, and mining, according to the company.

Updates for developers, functionality

RoboMantis now includes Energid Technologies Corp.‘s Actin software development kit (SDK) as an add-on. The robot uses the Robot Operating System (ROS) and seamlessly integrates object tracking while also controlling “dozens of degrees of freedom,” claimed Motiv Robotics.

“High-performance actuators coupled with near-real-time control means that teleoperation or automated tasks are simpler than ever to implement using RoboMantis as a remote tool able to perform complex tasks in complex and complicated, structured, and unstructured environments,” said the company.

In addition, RoboMantis’ onboard computing capacity enables it to operate in network-denied locations, said Motiv.

“Part of having a robotic architecture that is modular and scalable is having options for customers that fit their specific needs,” stated Chris Thayer, CEO at Motiv Robotics. “Enhancement options, such as the Actin add-on for the RoboMantis, greatly expand our ability to meet our customers’ wide-ranging needs.”

RoboMantis available now

RoboMantis is available now from Motiv Robotics. The robot will be on display at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2019 put on by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Robotics Society of Japan (RSJ).