After he was named among Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Manufacturing and Industry, we caught up with Arron Acosta of member company Rise Robotics.
What keeps Acosta awake at night? Gears. Arron is the CEO and Co-founder of Rise Robotics, a company that pioneers new, affordable ways to design and make robotic components without sacrificing performance or power. After graduating from MIT with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Acosta helped an MIT professor start Ekotrope, which developed a building energy analysis tool, and then co-founded Urban Hero Sports before embarking on the rise of robotics.
The Rise Robotics team brings the concept of accessibility to wearable robotics, with the vision of creating a build-your-own-exoskeleton developer kit—at the heart of which is their unique power solution called the Cyclone. By providing an alternative, cheaper, and more efficient option for hobbyists and roboticists around the world with which to experiment and innovate, Rise’s technology democratizes robotics that have historically been prohibitively expensive and highly inaccessible for most people.
So what’s with the gear stress? Gears take a lot of energy to make, require significant lead-time, and amount to almost a quarter of the total manufacturing cost of robotic components. Enter: The Cyclone. Inspired by musculoskeletal anatomy in its design, the Cyclone Muscle acts as the powerful missing link between a rotary motor and linear actuator. This missing link allows for linear power transmission from an electric rotary motor through a patent-pending mechanical design that eliminates the need for conventional gears. By improving the transmission efficiency of linear motion with their ingenious rotary-to-linear technology, the power source and converter are subsequently downsized, compounding the effects of efficiency upstream. In this way, Arron explains, their Cyclone design drastically reduces the amount of energy and materials used in the manufacturing process, which helps bring down their cost and carbon footprint. This is the ultimate goal—to make robotic components cheap and easy enough to manufacture that anyone can build a power-enhancing exoskeleton robot with Rise’s developer kit.
Where were you before you joined Greentown?
Our “office” was scattered among MIT labs, the MIT Hobby Shop, and Toomas’ basement—where the low-ceiling, dark and dank conditions were less than ideal for prototyping. We participated in Techstars in 2012–the press and funds we gained from that accelerator propelled us forward, but we were wasting a lot of time and resources traveling between different locations. What we really needed was a place where we could have an office and a lab next to each other. We considered Bolt, but didn’t want to do another accelerator program. On the recommendation of an MIT professor, I biked over to Boston to check out Greentown Labs and immediately said, “This place.” I got out my checkbook and wrote the check. Emily seemed shocked, but I told her, “You have no idea—We’ve been looking for you.” It was cheaper than every other co-working space we had looked at and allowed for scaling up and down, offered a growing community of other entrepreneurs to learn from, and combined lab and office space in the most pragmatic arrangement possible for hardware startups.
What motivates you?
I want to create abundance because poverty pisses me off – I don’t think it’s necessary. I think there’s enough energy coming into earth and on earth that every human being can enjoy abundance. The only thing holding us back is the ability to use that energy.
When did you decide you wanted to make robots?
One of my earliest memories is sitting behind the joysticks of an excavator. It was like I was a dinosaur – so powerful. I was 8.
What three words would you use to describe Greentown Labs?
Maple syrup, bacon.
What advice would you give to a hardware entrepreneur?
Surround yourself with believers – it’s the only way you’ll survive. Greentown was great because it’s a gathering of a bunch of people who believe in big ideas. If you’re in a basement alone and failing… that sucks. If you have a bad day at Greentown, everyone picks you back up.