Sarcos Robotics is making Iron Man suits for the government: Exoskeleton suits are a thing and Sarcos Robotics is making them.

• Author: Rowland, Sarah

IMAGINE A FUTURISTIC ROBOTIC SUIT--something out of an Iron Man movie--that uses technology and years of research to combine the intelligence, instinct, and judgment of humans with the strength, endurance, and precision of machines.

"Sarcos' vision centers around designing, building, and commercializing exoskeleton robots to augment the work of humans in a way that will boost worker productivity and prevent workplace injuries," explains Ben Wolff, the company's chairman, CEO, and president.

Twenty years in the making, Sarcos Robotics is a Salt Lake City outpost that's currently leading the exoskeleton market on a global scale. Exoskeletons are wearable devices that can be used to enhance human operations. For Sarcos, the dream began in the 1980s as a spin-off from a project conducted by the University of Utah.

The University was researching and working with the augmentation of human prosthetics. "Just think of prosthetics as electrically actuated pieces of machinery, paired with the human body, that allow the human to do things he/she couldn't do without the actual device," Wolff says. "That notion truly frames the whole context for who Sarcos is today as a company--this idea that you can use an intimate knowledge of the human body such as how it moves, to the biomechanics, and then use technologies to augment humans and make them safer and more capable in what they do."

Three decades later, Sarcos has evolved beyond prosthetics to humanoid robotics, creating humanoid robots in the 1990s, followed by a contract with the Department of Defense to create exoskeletons In the aughts. "Initial funding for the exoskeleton came from DARPA, and we continued getting funding from a variety of sources in the Federal Govt," says Wolff.

FROM PROSTHETICS TO ROBOTS

From 2007 to 2014, Sarcos operated under the name Raytheon Sarcos--the robotics division of defense for civil and cybersecurity technology. During this period, Raytheon Sarcos focused exclusively on developing leading-edge technologies for use by US governmental agencies. When Congress later defunded efforts the Pentagon had been involved in, the exoskeleton project went out the window and the company soon announced its business acquisition, led by former Raytheon Sarcos president, Dr. Fraser Smith.

Wolff was already an internationally recognized technology and telecom entrepreneur within the sector, and he set a management buyout in motion--where the leadership team and employees ended up...