Avik De and Gavin Kenneally are quintessential entrepreneurs. While completing their PhDs at Penn under Daniel Koditschek, famed legged roboticist at the GRASP Lab, they began their journey to build a better-legged robot after experiencing the state-of-the-art at that time, which was not scalable for commercialization and relied on expensive, fragile, and non-standard components. More importantly, they recognized the need to build mobile robots for customers, not just viral videos and lab experiments.  

Before formally launching the company in 2015 with Jiren Parikh, they spent years developing the foundational architecture and electronics, including a high bandwidth actuator and ultra-fast small-footprint reactive controller system that mimics how mammals move over unstructured terrain, while compensating for the fundamental drawbacks of mechanical systems trying to emulate biological designs.

The Ghost Minitaur was our first creation. The first direct-drive legged robot with the agility, capabilities and ease of programmability that we envisioned legged robotic systems should have to be useful and allow innovators to create new applications.

Since 2015, Ghost Robotics has been focused on building a Q-UGV that is the best-in-class, working hand-in-hand with our customers, not just throwing a robot onto the market from the lab. Useful and scalable technology takes time, and Ghost is committed to building the very best platform for defense contractors, technology innovators, and systems integrators to deliver solutions their customers need.

Our Vision series robots will evolve into a portfolio of various sized systems for specific environments and price points covering government and enterprise users. And Ghost’s underlying proprietary electronics, software stack, and control system for complex actuated systems will power a future of next-generation mobile robots beyond quadrupeds, including human enhancement systems, manipulation systems, and futuristic hybrid mobility platforms.