Black-I Robotics was founded in 2008 by Brian Hart and a group of inventors and engineers. Brian lost his son John, age 20, an Army infantryman, in Iraq, which motivated him to put his executive career aside and devote his time to helping the U. S. infantry to armor up, and other organizations to enhance their capabilities.

Black-I has worked closely with leading universities — including Princeton, MIT and Carnegie Mellon — as well as the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security, The Army Corps of Engineers and private companies such as Raytheon to work on a range of state-of-the-art programs. A technology project for DARPA, one of the government’s leading edge technology organizations, led to Black-I designing and developing a flexible heavy lift arm.

Brian concluded at the end of the DARPA project that integrating four revolutionary technologies experiencing dramatic performance improvements while simultaneously becoming much cheaper was the key to breaking the barriers holding back the development of a truly transformative arm that the warehouse, manufacturing floor and similar environments need at reasonable cost. Those technologies are Vision, Mobility, Strength and Safety.

Brian foresaw an arm with vision capabilities that enabled it to “see” an environment, avoid obstacles — human and machines — as it moved rapidly and safely to a shelf, for example, pick an object of virtually any standard heavy weight and shape, and place the item exactly where needed. Then return to it’s “hive,” ready to take on its next assignment, 24×7. The company partnered with Ascend Robotics, one of the premier materials handling companies in the world, to create state-of-the-art software while assembling an allstar team of structural engineers, computer specialists, inventors, and vision module experts — the best in the business. The result: Black-I Robotics’ Fullscope Mobile Heavy Lift Arm, an Arm years ahead of the competition.