Robots made for the construction industry are often pushed as a way to reduce the labor costs of simple, predictable work. But the team at Sarcos Robotics is taking a different tack. “Unlike other robotics companies focused on doing repetitive tasks better, faster and cheaper, we focus on augmenting humans to do non-repetitive tasks,” explains Ben Wolff, CEO of Salt Lake City-based Sarcos Robotics. “An awful lot of things on construction sites are unstructured and non-repetitive. They rely on human intelligence to do things more efficiently.”
This philosophy helps explain Sarcos’ eclectic offering of robots: an untethered, powered exoskeleton, a remotely operated robotic arm and the 16-lb Guardian S robot snake that can roll up stairs and magnetically crawl up vertical ferrous metal surfaces. Each uses robotics to enhance the capabilities of their human operators, allowing robotics to be applied to complex tasks that require human interaction and oversight.