Adaptive Machines: Our Focus and Mission

Adaptive Machines develops actuators with Physical Intelligence to remove the actuator bottleneck in robotics. By embedding adaptability directly in hardware, we enable robots to operate faster, stronger, more efficiently, and more safely.

Our focus

Robotics continues to advance in artificial intelligence, perception, and control, but hardware has not kept pace. Conventional motor–gearbox actuators limit speed, efficiency, adaptability, and safety. This bottleneck restricts real-world performance and scalability.

Adaptive Machines was founded to address this challenge. Our work is singularly focused on building adaptive actuators that incorporate mechanical intelligence—storing and releasing energy, adjusting stiffness, and working with physics rather than against it.

Why it matters

The robotics market is transitioning from fixed automation to collaborative robots and humanoids. These systems require actuators that are reusable, scalable, and efficient. Proprietary, custom-built hardware can serve prototypes, but deployment at scale demands standardized adaptive actuators.

Adaptive Machines provides this missing foundation. Our actuators are designed as off-the-shelf components that extend the performance envelope of robots across platforms and applications.

The path ahead

Robots must combine intelligence in software with intelligence in hardware. Adaptive Machines develops the building blocks that make this possible. By solving the actuator bottleneck, we create the conditions for robots that can be deployed safely, efficiently, and at scale.

About the founder

David Braun is the founder of Adaptive Machines. He leads foundational hardware research in mechanically adaptive robotics. His work received the NSF CAREER Award and the IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Best Paper Award. He holds USPTO patents on adaptive hardware and has led over a decade of research at leading international institutions.