In late 2019, after years of studying aviation and aerospace engineering, Hector (Haofeng) Xu decided to learn to fly helicopters. At the time, he was pursuing his PhD in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, so he was familiar with the risks associated with flying small aircraft. But something about being in the cockpit gave Xu a greater appreciation of those risks. After a couple of nerve-wracking experiences, he was inspired to make helicopter flight safer.

In 2021, he founded the autonomous helicopter company Rotor Technologies, Inc.

It turns out Xu’s near-misses weren’t all that unique. Although large, commercial passenger planes are extremely safe, people die every year in small, private aircraft in the U.S. Many of those fatalities occur during helicopter flights for activities like crop dusting, fighting fires, and medical evacuations.

Rotor is retrofitting existing helicopters with a suite of sensors and software to remove the pilot from some of the most dangerous flights and expand use cases for aviation more broadly.

“People don’t realize pilots are risking their lives every day in the U.S.,” Xu explained. “Pilots fly into wires, get disoriented in inclement weather, or otherwise lose control, and almost all of these accidents can be prevented with automation. We’re starting by targeting the most dangerous missions.”

Rotor’s autonomous machines are able to fly faster and longer and carry heavier payloads than battery powered drones, and by working with a reliable helicopter model that has been around for decades, the company has been able to commercialize quickly. Rotor’s autonomous aircraft are already taking to the skies around its Nashua, New Hampshire, headquarters for demo flights, and customers will be able to purchase them later this year.

“A lot of other companies are trying to build new vehicles with lots of new technologies around things like materials and power trains,” said Ben Frank ’14, Rotor’s chief commercial officer. “They’re trying to do everything. We’re really focused on autonomy. That’s what we specialize in and what we think will bring the biggest step-change to make vertical flight much safer and more accessible.”

Building a team at MIT

As an undergraduate at Cambridge University, Xu participated in the Cambridge-MIT Exchange Program (CME). His year at MIT apparently went well — after graduating Cambridge, he spent the next eight years at the Institute, first as a PhD student, then a postdoc, and finally as a research affiliate in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), a position he still holds today. During the CME program and his postdoc, Xu was advised by Professor Steven Barrett, who is now the head of AeroAstro. Xu said Barrett has played an important role in guiding him throughout his career.

“Rotor’s technology didn’t spin out of MIT’s labs, but MIT really shaped my vision for technology and the future of aviation,” Xu said.

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Xu’s first hire was Rotor Chief Technology Officer Yiou He SM ’14, PhD ’20, whom Xu worked with during his PhD. The decision was a sign of things to come: The number of MIT affiliates at the 50-person company is now in the double digits.

“The core tech team early on was a bunch of MIT PhDs, and they’re some of the best engineers I’ve ever worked with,” Xu said. “They’re just really smart and during grad school they had built some really fantastic things at MIT. That’s probably the most critical factor to our success.”

To help get Rotor off the ground, Xu worked with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service (VMS), MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP), and the National Science Foundation’s New England Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program on campus.

A key early decision was to work with a well-known aircraft from the Robinson Helicopter Company rather than building an aircraft from scratch. Robinson already requires its helicopters to be overhauled after about 2,000 hours of flight time, and that’s when Rotor jumps in.

The core of Rotor’s solution is what’s known as a “fly by wire” system — a set of computers and motors that interact with the helicopter’s flight control features. Rotor also equips the helicopters with a suite of advanced communication tools and sensors, many of which were adapted from the autonomous vehicle industry.

Rotor Technologies retrofits its autonomy stack onto existing helicopters. | Credit: Rotor Technologies

“We believe in a long-term future where there are no longer pilots in the cockpit, so we’re building for this remote pilot paradigm,” Xu said. “It means we have to build robust autonomous systems on board, but it also means that we need to build communication systems between the aircraft and the ground.”

Rotor is able to leverage Robinson’s existing supply chain, and potential customers are comfortable with an aircraft they’ve worked with before — even if no one is sitting in the pilot seat. Once Rotor’s helicopters are in the air, the startup offers 24/7 monitoring of flights with a cloud-based human supervision system the company calls Cloudpilot. The company is starting with flights in remote areas to avoid risk of human injury.

“We have a very careful approach to automation, but we also retain a highly skilled human expert in the loop,” Xu said. “We get the best of the autonomous systems, which are very reliable, and the best of humans, who are really great at decision-making and dealing with unexpected scenarios.”

Autonomous helicopters take off

Using small aircraft to do things like fight fires and deliver cargo to offshore sites is not only dangerous, it’s also inefficient. There are restrictions on how long pilots can fly, and they can’t fly during adverse weather or at night.

Most autonomous options today are limited by small batteries and limited payload capacities. Rotor’s aircraft, named the R550X, can carry loads up to 1,212 pounds, travel more than 120 miles per hour, and be equipped with auxiliary fuel tanks to stay in the air for hours at a time.

Some potential customers are interested in using the aircraft to extend flying times and increase safety, but others want to use the machines for entirely new kinds of applications.

“It is a new aircraft that can do things that other aircraft couldn’t — or maybe even if technically they could, they wouldn’t do with a pilot,” Xu said. “You could also think of new scientific missions enabled by this. I hope to leave it to people’s imagination to figure out what they can do with this new tool.”

Rotor plans to sell a small handful of aircraft this year and scale production to produce 50 to 100 aircraft a year from there.

Meanwhile, in the much longer term, Xu hopes Rotor will play a role in getting him back into helicopters and, eventually, transporting humans.

“Today, our impact has a lot to do with safety, and we’re fixing some of the challenges that have stumped helicopter operators for decades,” Xu said. “But I think our biggest future impact will be changing our daily lives. I’m excited to be flying in safer, more autonomous, and more affordable vertical take-off and-landing aircraft, and I hope Rotor will be an important part of enabling that.”

Editor’s Note: This article was republished with permission from MIT News.

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Realtime Robotics is helping robots solve the motion planning problem by giving them collision avoidance capabilities. Here, a robot avoids a researcher’s waving hand. | Credit: Realtime Robotics

George Konidaris still remembers his disheartening introduction to robotics.

“When you’re a young student and you want to program a robot, the first thing that hits you is this immense disappointment at how much you can’t do with that robot,” he says.

Most new roboticists want to program their robots to solve interesting, complex tasks – but it turns out that just moving them through space without colliding with objects is more difficult than it sounds.

Fortunately, Konidaris is hopeful that future roboticists will have a more exciting start in the field. That’s because roughly four years ago, he co-founded Realtime Robotics, a startup that’s solving the “motion planning problem” for robots.

The company has invented a solution that gives robots the ability to quickly adjust their path to avoid objects as they move to a target. The Realtime controller is a box that can be connected to a variety of robots and deployed in dynamic environments.

“Our box simply runs the robot according to the customer’s program,” explains Konidaris, who currently serves as Realtime’s chief roboticist. “It takes care of the movement, the speed of the robot, detecting obstacles, collision detection. All [our customers] need to say is, ‘I want this robot to move here.’”

Realtime’s key enabling technology is a unique circuit design that, when combined with proprietary software, has the effect of a plug-in motor cortex for robots. In addition to helping to fulfill the expectations of starry-eyed roboticists, the technology also represents a fundamental advance toward robots that can work effectively in changing environments.

Realtime Robotics helping robots get around

Konidaris was not the first person to get discouraged about the motion planning problem in robotics. Researchers in the field have been working on it for 40 years. During a four-year postdoc at MIT, Konidaris worked with School of Engineering Professor in Teaching Excellence Tomas Lozano-Perez, a pioneer in the field who was publishing papers on motion planning before Konidaris was born.

Humans take collision avoidance for granted. Konidaris points out that the simple act of grabbing a beer from the fridge actually requires a series of tasks such as opening the fridge, positioning your body to reach in, avoiding other objects in the fridge, and deciding where to grab the beer can.

“You actually need to compute more than one plan,” Konidaris says. “You might need to compute hundreds of plans to get the action you want. … It’s weird how the simplest things humans do hundreds of times a day actually require immense computation.”

In robotics, the motion planning problem revolves around the computational power required to carry out frequent tests as robots move through space. At each stage of a planned path, the tests help determine if various tiny movements will make the robot collide with objects around it. Such tests have inspired researchers to think up ever more complicated algorithms in recent years, but Konidaris believes that’s the wrong approach.

“People were trying to make algorithms smarter and more complex, but usually that’s a sign that you’re going down the wrong path,” Konidaris says. “It’s actually not that common that super technically sophisticated techniques solve problems like that.”

Konidaris left MIT in 2014 to join the faculty at Duke University, but he continued to collaborate with researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Duke is also where Konidaris met Realtime co-founders Sean Murray, Dan Sorin, and Will Floyd-Jones. In 2015, the co-founders collaborated to make a new type of computer chip with circuits specifically designed to perform the frequent collision tests required to move a robot safely through space. The custom circuits could perform operations in parallel to more efficiently test short motion collisions.

“When I left MIT for Duke, one thing bugging me was this motion planning thing should really be solved by now,” Konidaris says. “It really did come directly out of a lot of experiences at MIT. I wouldn’t have been able to write a single paper on motion planning before I got to MIT.”

The researchers founded Realtime in 2016 and quickly brought on robotics industry veteran Peter Howard, who currently serves as Realtime’s CEO and is also considered a co-founder.

“I wanted to start the company in Boston because I knew MIT and lot of robotics work was happening there,” says Konidaris, who moved to Brown University in 2016. “Boston is a hub for robotics. There’s a ton of local talent, and I think a lot of that is because MIT is here — PhDs from MIT became faculty at local schools, and those people started robotics programs. That network effect is very strong.”

Removing robot restraints

Today the majority of Realtime’s customers are in the automotive, manufacturing, and logistics industries. The robots using Realtime’s solution are doing everything from spot welding to making inspections to picking items from bins.

After customers purchase Realtime’s control box, they load in a file describing the configuration of the robot’s work cell, information about the robot such as its end-of-arm tool, and the task the robot is completing. Realtime can also help optimally place the robot and its accompanying sensors around a work area. Konidaris says Realtime can shorten the process of deploying robots from an average of 15 weeks to one week.

Once the robot is up and running, Realtime’s box controls its movement, giving it instant collision-avoidance capabilities.

“You can use it for any robot,” Konidaris says. “You tell it where it needs to go and we’ll handle the rest.”

Realtime is part of MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP), which helps companies make connections with larger industrial partners, and it recently joined ILP’s STEX25 startup accelerator.

With a few large rollouts planned for the coming months, the Realtime team’s excitement is driven by the belief that solving a problem as fundamental as motion planning unlocks a slew of new applications for the robotics field.

“What I find most exciting about Realtime is that we are a true technology company,” says Konidaris. “The vast majority of startups are aimed at finding a new application for existing technology; often, there’s no real pushing of the technical boundaries with a new app or website, or even a new robotics ‘vertical.’ But we really did invent something new, and that edge and that energy is what drives us. All of that feels very MIT to me.”

Editor’s Note: This article was republished from MIT News.

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Catalia Health uses a personal robot assistant, Mabu, to help patients managing chronic diseases. | Credit: Catalia Health

Editor’s Note: Catalia Health Founder and CEO Cory Kidd will be speaking at the Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum, which takes place December 9-10 in Santa Clara, Calif. and is produced by The Robot Report. Kidd will provide insights into the design, development, and production of the Mabu platform, including its voice-based interface, as well as the Catalia Health Platform, a HIPAA-compliant cloud-based system for monitoring patient’s progress and challenges. He will also discuss an ongoing pilot program with pharmaceutical firm Pfizer focused on patient behaviors outside of clinical environments and the impact regular engagement with artificial intelligence.

The Mabu robot, with its small yellow body and friendly expression, serves, literally, as the face of the care management startup Catalia Health. The most innovative part of the company’s solution, however, lies behind Mabu’s large blue eyes.

Catalia Health’s software incorporates expertise in psychology, AI, and medical treatment plans to help patients manage their chronic conditions. The result is a sophisticated robot companion that uses daily conversations to give patients tips, medication reminders, and information on their condition while relaying relevant data to care providers. The information exchange can also take place on patients’ mobile phones.

“Ultimately, what we’re building are care management programs to help patients in particular disease states,” said Catalia Health Founder and CEO Cory Kidd. “A lot of that is getting information back to the people providing care. We’re helping them scale up their efforts to interact with every patient more frequently.”

Heart failure patients first brought Mabu into their homes about a year and a half ago as part of a partnership with Kaiser Permanente. The healthcare provider pays for the service. Since then, Catalia Health has also partnered with other healthcare systems and pharmaceutical companies to help patients dealing with conditions including rheumatoid arthritis and kidney cancer.

Treatment plans for chronic diseases can be challenging for patients to manage consistently, and many people don’t follow them as prescribed. Kidd said Mabu’s daily conversations help not only patients, but also human caregivers as they make treatment decisions using data collected by their robot counterpart.

Robotics for change

Kidd was a student and faculty member at Georgia Tech before coming to MIT for his master’s degree in 2001. His work focused on addressing problems in healthcare caused by an aging population and an increase in the number of people managing chronic diseases.

“The way we deliver healthcare doesn’t scale to the needs we have, so I was looking for technologies that might help with that,” Kidd said.

Many studies have found that communicating with someone in person, as opposed to over the phone or online, makes that person appear more trustworthy, engaging, and likeable. At MIT, Kidd conducted studies aimed at understanding if those findings translated to robots.

“What I found was when we used an interactive robot that you could look in the eye and share the same physical space with, you got the same psychological effects as face-to-face interaction,” Kidd said.

Catalia Health Founder and CEO Cory Kidd

As part of his Ph.D. in MIT Media Lab’s Media Arts and Sciences program, Kidd tested that finding in a randomized, controlled trial with patients in a diabetes and weight management program at the Boston University Medical Center. A portion of the patients were given a robotic weight-loss coach to take home, while another group used a computer running the same software. The tabletop robot conducted regular check ups and offered tips on maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle. Patients who received the robot were much more likely to stick with the weight loss program.

Upon finishing his Ph.D. in 2007, Kidd immediately sought to apply his research by starting the company Intuitive Automata to help people manage their diabetes using robot coaches. Even as he pursued the idea, though, Kidd said he knew it was too early to be introducing such sophisticated technology to a healthcare industry that, at the time, was still adjusting to electronic health records.

Intuitive Automata ultimately wasn’t a major commercial success, but it did help Kidd understand the healthcare sector at a much deeper level as he worked to sell the diabetes and weight management programs to providers, pharmaceutical companies, insurers, and patients.

“I was able to build a big network across the industry and understand how these people think about challenges in healthcare,” Kidd said. “It let me see how different entities think about how they fit in the healthcare ecosystem.”

Cheaper computing enables better care

Since then, Kidd has watched the costs associated with robotics and computing plummet. Many people have also enthusiastically adopted computer assistance like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. Finally, Kidd said members of the healthcare industry have developed an appreciation for technology’s potential to complement traditional methods of care.

“The common ways [care is delivered] on the provider side is by bringing patients to the doctor’s office or hospital,” Kidd explained. “Then on the pharma side, it’s call center-based. In the middle of these is the home visitation model. They’re all very human powered. If you want to help twice as many patients, you hire twice as many people. There’s no way around that.”

In the summer of 2014, he founded Catalia Health to help patients with chronic conditions at scale.

“It’s very exciting because I’ve seen how well this can work with patients,” Kidd said of the company’s potential. “The biggest challenge with the early studies was that, in the end, the patients didn’t want to give the robots back. From my perspective, that’s one of the things that shows this really does work.”

Mabu makes friends

Catalia Health uses artificial intelligence to help Mabu learn about each patient through daily conversations, which vary in length depending on the patient’s answers.

“A lot of conversations start off with ‘How are you feeling?’ similar to what a doctor or nurse might ask,” Kidd explained. “From there, it might go off in many directions. There are a few things doctors or nurses would ask if they could talk to these patients every day.”

For example, Mabu would ask heart failure patients how they are feeling, if they have shortness of breath, and about their weight.

“Based on patients’ answers, Mabu might say ‘You might want to call your doctor,’ or ‘I’ll send them this information,’ or ‘Let’s check in tomorrow,'” Kidd said.

The Robot Report is launching the Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum, which will be on Dec. 9-10 in Santa Clara, Calif. The conference and expo will focus on improving the design, development, and manufacture of next-generation healthcare robots. Learn more about the Healthcare Robotics Engineering Forum, and registration is now open.

Catalia Health works with partners for Mabu

Last year, Catalia Health announced a collaboration with the American Heart Association that has allowed Mabu to deliver the association’s guidelines for patients living with heart failure.

“A patient might say, ‘I’m feeling terrible today,’ and Mabu might ask, ‘Is it one of these symptoms a lot of people with your condition deal with?’ We’re trying to get down to whether it’s the disease or the drug. When that happens, we do two things: Mabu has a lot of information about problems a patient might be dealing with, so she’s able to give quick feedback. Simultaneously, she’s sending that information to a clinician — a doctor, nurse, or pharmacists — whoever’s providing care.”

In addition to healthcare providers, Catalia also partners with pharmaceutical companies. In each case, patients pay nothing out of pocket for their robot companions. Although the data Catalia Health sends pharmaceutical companies is completely anonymized, it can help them follow their treatment’s effects on patients in real time and better understand the patient experience.

Details about many of Catalia Health’s partnerships have not been disclosed, but the company did announce a collaboration with Pfizer last month to test the impact of Mabu on patient treatment plans.

Over the next year, Kidd hopes to add to the company’s list of partnerships and help patients dealing a wider swath of diseases. Regardless of how fast Catalia Health scales, he said the service it provides will not diminish as Mabu brings its trademark attentiveness and growing knowledge base to every conversation.

“In a clinical setting, if we talk about a doctor with good bedside manner, we don’t mean that he or she has more clinical knowledge than the next person; we simply mean they’re better at connecting with patients,” Kidd said. “I’ve looked at the psychology behind that — What does it mean to be able to do that? — and turned that into the algorithms we use to help create conversations with patients.”

Editor’s Note: This article was republished with permission from MIT News.

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