Episode #106| Bionic Hands For Humans and Robots: The Psyonic Story

We share how a decade of soft robotics, open APIs, and relentless iteration turned a 3D-printed prototype into a durable, touch-sensing bionic hand used by amputees and robots. Stories of failure, funding, and firsts reveal how speed, sensation, and design choices translate to real lives and real factories.

• early 3D printing wins and durability limits
• shift to soft robotics, silicone overmolding, carbon fiber reinforcement
• founding spark, Ecuador trial, and move from academia to company
• SBIR lifeline, failed crowdfunding, then coverage and clinical validation
• speed, grip force, and touch sensors compared with the market
• open API for control and data streaming in minutes
• robotics crossover in automotive and research labs
• access initiatives via the Ability Fund and global impact
• manufacturing scale plans and ethical boundaries
• practical founder habits, grit, and advice to start now

Please listen to the disclaimer at the end of this podcast

Show notes: https://3dheals.com/aadeel-akhtar-bionic-hands-for-humans-and-robots-the-psyonic-story/

YouTube: https://youtu.be/mDVMRhjXr0w?si=qoZrScjaC6nbiPMJ

About our guest:

Dr. Aadeel Akhtar, CEO of PSYONIC, founded the company to create advanced, accessible bionic limbs after meeting a young girl in Pakistan who was missing a limb. PSYONIC's bionic Ability Hand is the fastest on the market, impact-resistant, and the first to provide a sense of touch. It is also covered by Medicare and is being used by humans and robotics companies globally, including NASA, Meta, Mercedes, and Google. Dr. Akhtar earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and an M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois, along with a B.S. in Biology and an M.S. in Computer Science from Loyola University Chicago. He’s been recognized by MIT Technology Review and Newsweek and secured a 3-shark deal on Shark Tank. 

Transcript

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Meet Psionic And The Ability Hand

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Lattice episode 106. This is your host, Dr. Jenny Chen. In today's episode, we had a great conversation with Dr. Adio Actar, the visionary CEO and founder of Cyanic. Join our in-depth conversation around the world of advanced bionic limbs and explore how Cyanic is revolutionizing its prosthetics technology on both humans and robots. So sit back, relax, and get ready to be inspired. Please listen to the disclaimer at the end of this podcast. Hello, hello. Welcome to the pod, Atio. Yeah, thank you for having me. Well, I look forward to this interview for literally years. And finally, I feel we're ready. We're ready for you. Everybody, this is an incredible interview that I've been waiting. This is the CEO and founder of Psionic. And for those who don't know who what Psionic is, you will assume.

From 3D Prints To Durable Design

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Yeah, so what we do at Psionic is we develop advanced bionic limbs for both humans and robots. And so it's a prosthetic hand for people who are missing them. And it's also the same hand that goes on industrial robot arms and humanoid robots. And what we build for humans benefits robots, and what we build for robots benefits humans.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Awesome. And you know, for the 3D printing community that we typically talk to, prosthetic hand, prosthetic limbs aren't a strange topic. How do you differentiate cyanic arms or ability hand from all these other 3D printed prosthetics that we see every day?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Yeah. And you know, the thing is that this is the hand I'm holding right here, the ability hand, right? This is the 9.5th generation of the hand that we've developed over the last like 11, 12 years now. And um the first like four hands were entirely 3D printed, like fully 3D printed, um, using like PLA and ABS. And we started that way. It was really great because it made um kind of uh building devices accessible, like more accessible than ever before. And um, when we started, it was around like 2013, 2014 when like Makerbot was becoming like really huge at the time. And so uh there were like uh communities growing online through instructables and thingiverse, and we found like open early open source designs from um like in move and like open bionics, where we were like, hey, these um these are like interesting like models of like hands. Can we start there and uh see what we can build? And then um the next uh three versions of the hand mark, so mark one and mark two were based on open source designs we found online, and then mark three through mark five, we designed like we started designing ourselves and we open sourced those so anyone can find the um the uh instructions to build those versions online. And what was very interesting was that we thought that you know just by building these like super low-cost 3D printed hands that this is going to like revolutionize everything. And then when we started talking with like actual patients and customers, the number one thing they complained about wasn't necessarily that the hands were like super expensive. That was that was a problem, right? But it was more so that they were breaking their super expensive like $50,000 within a couple months of using it, and that was disrupting them a lot more in their uh daily lives than just not using a hand at all. And if we gave them one of these 3D printed hands, then they would have broken the thing like within a minute of using it. So we had to figure out how could we still leverage the low cost of 3D printing, but then make this hand more robust than anything else that's out there. And uh, we came across a soft robotics, the the whole field of soft robotics. And um, at Yale, they had this group there called the Grab Lab, and they were they have this like soft robotics toolkit where they were like using low-cost silicones, like two-part silicones you can buy from Smoothon, and then using 3D printed molds to like make all sorts of like cool like robots that were flexible and compliant, like your own fingers uh are, right? And so we started using some of those techniques of like, hey, can we use silicone rubber? And we'd 3D print like a bone inside of the fingers, and then we would over mold it with the silicone in a 3D printed mold, and these fingers are flexible, so I can take it, I could like smash it, and it survives the impact. We've done like flaming board breaking with it. We're at three wooden boards set on fire, punched through it. I've dropped it off the roof of my house, it survived. I put it in a dry.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

We need some videos, we need some videos as a B-row for this.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

And all of those are on our YouTube channel too, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

And so we we learned that if we could um use 3D printing in a different way to build these soft components and reinforce them with materials like carbon fiber. Use we have a 3D printed palm underneath here, and we reinforce that with carbon fiber, that uh we can build something that's super durable and super strong, but still also low cost to make and um and uh easy to manufacture.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

You know, I I think I made a mistake to ask you a question because this is like 10 years of work, of research, and maybe even more than that, of work and not just pathetics, but also neuroengineering all compressing to one hour episode. So it's okay if we can't unpack all the important concepts, but I think that's a very good timeline to just give people a concept of how much work was put into this in the last decade to come to the version the 9.5 today. And also, I remember you had an infographic with all those versions in one picture, right? Or something like that. I'd love to uh actually include that in our show notes so that people have a concept. Yes, you can only look at it, but you know, it just represents all the different conceptual evolution behind this hand.

Origin Story And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Now, let's roll back a couple decades earlier when you were still young. What inspired this whole thing? I mean, you really bet big your life onto this whole project of creating psionic ability hand and its related technologies. But let's let's roll to into the origin of the company and what started it.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Yeah, I I've been wanting to build bionic limbs since I was actually seven years old. So my parents are from Pakistan and I was visiting, and I was born in Chicago. But when I was visiting, that was the first time I met someone missing a limb. She was my age, uh living in poverty, missing her right leg and using a tree branch as a crutch. And um, that's what inspired me to go into this field. So the original plan was to become a medical doctor who worked with people uh missing limbs. And I went to Loyola, Chicago, got a bachelor's degree in biology there, a master's in computer science. I taught there for a couple years, and then I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, got another master's in electrical and computer engineering, PhD in neuroscience, and then I left medical school to do this because this was a bit more fun than uh finishing medical school. Um, but also we could make a much stronger impact um through a company uh than we could through academia. And it was while I was doing my PhD, we got the chance to go down to Ecuador, where we were, it was Mark II of the ability hand. So this was the summer of 2014. That the hand was fully 3D printed, wires going everywhere, breadboards, power supplies the wall. The hand was three times the size of an average human hand. Um, and despite that, Juan, our very first human user of the hand, he had lost his left hand 35 years prior due to a landline explosion, and he made a pinch with his left hand for the first time in 35 years in front of international news stations and said he felt as though a part of him had come back. And when he said that, that's when I realized that if I stay in academia, this just ends up as a journal paper. And if I finish medical school then and work at an academic hospital, that's that's what becomes of this. If we want everyone to feel the same way that Juan did, we had to commercialize this technology. And so that's when Psionic was born.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

By the way, you're famous in the University of Chicago. I don't know if you know that.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Yeah, I apparently you're the most famous engineer coming out of that. I mean, according to my intern, Peter. Yeah, all right. He's at UC right now. Yeah. But you still teach at the school, right? Or occasionally.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Yeah, so I'm affiliate faculty at the University of Illinois as well as at the University of California, San Diego.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

So, okay, now that you wanted to form a company as everybody else from the academia, what was a deal like, you know, was it 2015 that you started the company? What was a deal like 10 years ago?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

What what was the What were you like?

SPEAKER_00 8:18

What were you like? I mean, you were just a fresh PhD yeah. You haven't even finished it back then, right? You didn't even finish your PhD before you finish. Yeah, I well now you finished, but back then you were still in the middle of completing and so how was was that what was that like wanting to form a company?

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Um it was it was definitely daunting. Uh so it's funny because that that Ecuador trip I took, my wife usually refers to it as like I I went down as a student and I came back as a CEO. And it was it was really interesting because I mean I never viewed it from that perspective, but she's seeing it from like like uh like that external

From Lab To Startup Survival

SPEAKER_01 8:55

perspective, and I was like, huh, that's that's quite interesting. The thing is, is that I'd seen so many research projects, like so many theses and and dissertations that were so promising and so exciting, just never happened like beyond just getting published. And that was that was the end goal of it. And then they just sat on a shelf. And I was like, if we had that kind of reaction from one of our very first human users, like we need to commercialize this technology. And so we started entering like our school's business plan competition and started like going through the like the National Science Foundation iCorps program, which basically helps teach engineers how to like translate their technologies over to like real-world product market fit, talk to as many customers as possible, find out what the real pain points are. And that was, I mean, it was fun because it was like learning a new language. Everything I'd learned up to that point in time was all very either scientific or engineering based, but it wasn't like um very business focused. And we wanted to make that impact. We needed to learn the business side of it too, and like how could we turn this into a sustainable revenue model so that we can help more people as we continue to grow? It was a lot of it was also just we had this very specific goal in mind. We wanted to get people in our hands, so it's like we're going to do whatever it takes to get there, um, whether it's start a business, um, like like figure out how to build these hands, like work with as many patients and clinicians as possible, and then also now expand to the robotics side as well, too, to uh help uh increase the volumes and and subsidize the cost for the human side as well.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yeah, so just I'm super interested because a lot of our audience are still in the lab and want to form their companies. How did you what I mean? I know it's a very slow progressive process to turn from academia to commercial to entrepreneur like you are today. You're definitely one of the most polished speakers I see in the public domain, I have to say. And you're you're you are through trial of fire. So I'm pretty sure day one, Adil, you're not that smooth. But you know, the first, I would say 24 months of your company inception is probably exciting at the same time scary. How did you survive that period of time and transform yourself?

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Yeah, and honestly, the the pitch now is nothing like it was like like back then, right? Um and it took a lot of iteration and practice, right? I mean, like I I I've probably given not like exaggerating, probably over like between a thousand and two thousand pitches over the last like since the existence of the company, right? And uh now, especially because you know we're raising our series A around and and doing math, I'm I'm I'm pitching like three or four times a day, right? Um like every day. And and a lot of it's just like it's it's reinforcement learning, right? You do it and then you suck at it, and then you get feedback, and then you keep improving and improving and improving and improving. You see what resonates with your audience, like what are the things that are making their eyes like light up and like stay interested, or the things that they're just glazing over and they don't care about, right? Uh and during those, yeah, those first one of the things that has always been with us from the beginning is having a compelling demo, like a demonstration of like the product. Even if it's like a really like like not well put together uh put together demo, but something that's moving and it's working. Uh like even from the early days, like even when we had all those wires connected to like the breadboards and all that stuff, I would hook up the the hand to my muscles and I would like control it, and then it would, it would um people could get it. They they understood really easily like exactly what we were doing, right? Having that demo was uh like a critical element from the start. And I don't think Jenny, I don't know if you've ever seen me not carrying the the I was gonna say, yes, you and that limb.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

It's probably that's your third limb, actually. Your third upper limb.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Right, yeah. Uh I mean to the point where I can I I can tell like what grip someone is doing just based off the frequency of the motors. Like I've become so attuned um to the product that um yeah, it's it's uh it's it's it is like a a part of me, right? Um both like almost like physically and and uh mentally in that regard, where I I understand like all the ins and outs of it and um and how to do different tasks and everything with it. I mean, obviously I'm not uh I'm not someone with a limb difference, and their experience is going to be completely different than mine and how they integrate into their lives. But by being able to at least have an intimate knowledge of our products and work with a lot of our human users of it, we know exactly what the pitfalls are, we know what we need to

Funding Roller Coaster And First Wins

SPEAKER_01 13:32

improve. That it's that reinforcement learning, that iteration that needs to go into it that we started from the very beginning in those first 24 years.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Yeah. And then initially you mentioned you joined a lot of government-funded programs to get funding and experience. The 20 the first couple years, is that mostly the non-dilutive funding where like, you know, the grants supported your projects ahead of. And when was the point where you started to say we can really start to sell this product?

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah, so um we got uh about four NSF SBIR, so um Small Business Innovation Research Awards. Um, and I think it totaled to around like 2.7 million or so at the end of it all. And uh so that was really our lifeline from the beginning, like when we started the company. And to give an example, in the summer of 2017, we spent then Shenzhen, China. It was me, my wife who was six months pregnant, it was uh our one and a half-year-old son, and then like four of my undergraduate students, all in a high rise in Shenzhen. And um, only one of us spoke Chinese, and it was not me, and it was not my wife. And so we found like, you know, our early motor manufacturers and our gear manufacturers there, and then we're able to rapidly prototype on like electronic circuit boards, and we decided to do an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to kind of fund them. And um, we were gonna raise $250,000 on this Indiegogo campaign, and we ended up raising $7,000. So it was a complete and utter massive failure, right? And at the end of that year, we had $200 left in our bank account. And the following week, well, so that that month we learned that we were going to be getting our first NSF grant, the SBIR award. And you know, we were thinking like, do I need to go back to medical school? Do my students need to go to grad school, etc. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Well, medical school is not gonna get you there, I'm telling you. That's that's slow, that's very slow.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Yeah, but I mean it's cyaniking to live, right? Right, right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Near death experience.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Yeah, exactly. And then we found out in December we're going to get that grant, and literally the next week we had $200,200 in our bank account, and uh it was more money than we ever had before, right? So it's like this been this like roller coaster, right? Of like low lows and high highs, and but it the it's been like increasing the the entire time. So that's we're fortunate on that front.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

And also you had a family already, exactly, and a newborn.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yes. I we incorporated the company um 10 days before my firstborn, a son was born. So um, yeah, my wife jokes that Cyanica is is my baby, and then like Zayn, my my son is her baby.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

I have to comment that your wife must be a very calm person.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

She she definitely is the one that keeps me sane and um motivated to do a lot of this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

But then I started Indiegogo, that was a fail, but you didn't stop there. You you also participated in other kind of crowdfunding platform, you didn't give up.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so um we so we got the SBR awards, and that got us to the point where uh we actually got a product that was like ready. And so we talked with a lot of clinicians, we had them test it out with patients, and then one of them in particular, Dave Rodder in Chicago, he's like the best prosthetist in the entire world. And he he like designed Roger Ebert's jaw, he does like Tammy Duckworth's um legs, uh the the seminary and um and so he had seen every iteration of our hand, and he said everyone was a piece of junk up until that one. And exactly, and then he finally was like, Okay, you might be on to something. And um, we we went through him uh fit our very first couple patients and uh got it covered through insurance, and then that was around uh and we did like a limited release in the Midwest, and that was like around Which version was that? I mean, which

Product Maturity And Market Launch

SPEAKER_01 17:14

version of eight, that was Mark, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

And what was the feature that really impressed him?

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Um it was it was the durability. That was that was and he was the one that told us that he was like, if you're going to build something, you need to build it to be durable, right? And and uh impact resistant. And um the other thing was that the the fact that we got it covered under Medicare. That was like the so the price point uh was a huge thing for him. And then eventually, like this is the first hand to give users touch feedback, the speed, just the fastest bionic hand on the market as well. So those are uh additional things that when people saw that, like they were like, oh wow, it moves so fast, it reacts so quickly to my muscles, that it really got them to like, you know, like lock into the device uh itself. So uh we started that like limited release around that time is when we s where we raised a pre-seed round. Um and so we raised it from like angel investors, like I think it was like around 1.4 million that we raised from angel investors, and that brought us to our nationwide launch um of Mark IX of the ability head. And uh in the summer of 2022, um, that's when we were really, you know, we needed to expand, we needed to take this to the next level, we need to hire a bunch more people. And we were still in Champaign, uh Illinois at the end uh we were looking to grow and move to uh uh uh the next place. And so we're thinking of either like Chicago or San Diego or our top two choices. And um we ended up going to San Diego primarily because we're working very closely with the the Navy hospital on the next generation of these devices that are directly connected to your bones, your muscles, and your nerves, as well as UCSD is a great um school over there as well. We've got like a the big military population, we've got the Paralympic training center and the Olympic training center like 40 minutes away from us. The Challenge Athletes Foundation is close by, huge med tech community, and but no one was building devices there, like the at least bionic hand devices and prosthetics. And so we were like, we can go there, develop like the devices, and then bring all of these this community together to turn San Diego into the bionics capital of the world. And around that time, that's when we were raising our our seed round. So we started a seed round like in 2023. Um, and we there was I think the Wall Street Journal said at that time it was like the worst time in history to like raise from like VCs. And we were like, okay, well, that that doesn't bode well. Um and we uh half of our sales at the time were coming from social media, which for a medical device is not common. And we were like, you know, we've been burned by crowdfunding before, like the Indiegoga campaign did not go well, but we're in a much different situation than we were last time, right? We've got like way better assets, we've got like way better like connections and networks than we did like four or five years ago when we were doing the uh the Indiegogo campaign. And so we decided, you know what, let's give this a shot again. And right off the bat, like we had like videos of the hand walking on its own for Halloween. We had like the arm wrestling and the the uh flaming board breaking videos. We had uh another video where it was like the Boston Dynamics dog with two arms built by a professor from the University of Illinois, and then we put our hands on it and gave it lightsabers, and they had a lightsaber duel against the Boston.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

I think I saw that one before, yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Yeah, and like these all like you know, just fed the viral flame, right? And allowed us to continuously raise through um Star Nine. And and for us, the most beautiful thing was if we're a company that's about accessibility, right? Why not make the company itself accessible? And the most beautiful thing was that our own patients got to invest in the company. So we got to be part of us building this for them, and we ended up raising 4.1 million on um Star Nine, which I think is one of the like the largest crowdfundraises that they've had. And it was just really exciting to see that. And that that's what ended up um getting us like on the shark tick, right? Um so like ABC called us and they were like, hey, we think you're uh we you'd be good on the show, and and so we ended up like filling out the application, auditioning, and and then uh appearing

Speed, Touch, And Robustness Explained

SPEAKER_01 21:10

on the show and making a three-shark deal, which was just like we never would have thought any of that was going to happen. We couldn't.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Yeah, no, I don't think you ever shied away from a single interview, and you're always very enthusiastic and you know, always speak with passion. I mean, your passion is very obvious through your just everything, every presentation. Now, um, first of all, I just want to mention I thought you were in San Diego for some other reason, but the beach is there, the surfing culture, but never thought of the Navy, uh the Navy station there and all the other patient population.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

I'll say the beaches don't hurt. The the weather is beautiful out here.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Um well, you know, at the end of the day, you are selling um really cutting edge technology. So without the technology actually working, obviously no amount of marketing can help.

unknown 21:59

So

SPEAKER_00 22:00

So let's de dig a little bit deep into what abil what your ability hand can do. Well, first of all, why do you why did you name it 9.5 and not just straight 10?

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Yeah, so a lot of it was upgrades that we did on the main like structure of the Mark IX. So every generation of the hand that we do is basically like starting from scratch and like rebuilding the entire thing, right? And so we didn't like rebuild it entirely from scratch. It was made more so improvements that we did on Mark IX. So we made the fingers conductive, we made the fingers stronger, and the silicone is more robust. I certainly kernels are uh are much more robust and uh easier to produce um as well, too. And um, and then like we we updated the logo to be like a chrome reflective logo on the back. Um, so it was just a lot more polished uh version of Mark 9 from everything that we had learned. And now we're working on Mark 10 of the ability hand, which um that that's going to be like redoing the entire thing from the the ground up uh based on all the learnings that we learned from the robotics customers and our human users uh as well, too.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

What do you mean by ground up?

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Yeah, so starting from the actuators, um, we're we're going to have different motors in there. We're going to have like a new gearing system, we're going to have like updated like electronics and encoders in there. We're going to probably be adding more degrees of freedom in the hand, too, so more motors as well. And so that's a completely new design, like entirely from what we have right now in the ability hand. And so it's going to be really exciting, the new features that's going to unlock and enable in the next generation hand.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

So from your version A to version 9, that's also a kind of revolution new refresh of the old version. Okay, I see. Got it. And then you, you know, I I definitely, you know, dig deep into you know what are your core patents are, which means the things that really differentiate you from any other competitors. And a lot of concepts really require unpacking a little bit because I I would say a lot a large portion of our audience is general public, and they probably don't understand some of the the key components of the MK hands. Um well, first of all, why uh so some some of the major features that you mentioned, including the very fast speed, the 0.2 seconds. I mean, if you tell me 0.2 seconds, I know it's very fast, but I have no concept of how to compare this, you know, to others. Another example of this is 30, I mean the touch sensors, I I get it too. Um I mean, 30 versus other numbers. Again, you know, I'd love to just hear some of these key features. Like, how do you compare it to other products on the market that's comparable? And what is the significance of these?

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Yeah, absolutely. And so um we have like uh we have uh like several patents uh that revolve around one, the the flexibility of the fingers, right? So we've got a compliant full-bar linkage mechanism that makes the fingers very flexible, right? So that's why I can take it and I can smash it and it survives the impact. I see. So we have another one.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

So that's part of the durability that you're talking about. The compliance. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

That's part of the durability of the compliance.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

And so then we have another patent on the brushless motor control technology that allows our fingers to move at like uh in 200 milliseconds and 0.2 seconds, you can close a finger. So to put that in context, you blink your eyes in about 300 milliseconds, so it's technically faster than we click our own eyes. Um then secondly, it's about two and a half times faster than um than other hands on the market. Um that what about human hand?

SPEAKER_00 25:31

I mean, how fast can we open our and close our own hand?

SPEAKER_01 25:34

So human hands can be around like 75 milliseconds. So you you can go faster with a human hand still. And we're trying to like draw that that balance, right? Because we there's a there's a trade-off between the speed that you have and the amount of strength um that you have because of the gear ratios that are in the the gearbox. And so because of that, we didn't want to go so weak that we would be like ultra fast, but then like you can't like really grab onto anything strongly, right? And so now we've got like 18 pounds of grip force, which I think a human hand maximum that like you can do way more than that, but like 40 pounds is like was like typical, uh, but 18 pounds is enough to do like most activities of daily living, but then we can move the fingers at 200 milliseconds, like twice as fast, uh more than twice as fast as these other hands, so that you can get that response time well enough. And then um, so that's the speed aspect, and then the touch sensing. So this was the first bionic hand on the market to include touch sensors, and so we have six um in each of the fingers. So there's one on the fingertip, one on the finger pad, two on the outside, then two on the inside. And then that relates to a vibration motor for our human user. So when you touch here, they can feel a vibration. Um, like when they touch an object, when they've let go, and how hard that they've uh pressed on that object. And um, and so uh by A, being able to give that that feedback back to users, that was already a huge thing. Uh, our our very first patient, Sergeant Garrett Anderson, he lost his hand in uh Iraq in 2005 due

Open API And Developer Ecosystem

SPEAKER_01 26:58

to roadside bomb. Sorry, he was our first US patient. Juan was our first patient, the one in Ecuador. Uh, but he told us that he could actually feel his daughter's hand. Um, and that's something that he couldn't do with any other prosthesis before, right? I mean, and that those moments, that's why we do what we do, right? That that to improve those uh the quality of life for individuals with limb differences. And um, and so yeah, I think we're still the only bionic hand of the prosthetic hand with uh touch sensors built in. On the robotic side, there's now a ton of hands that have like touch sensors uh built in. There's a lot of grown competition coming from China in particular, too, with just hardware that's coming out. We still have like, you know, state-of-the-art, like uh like uh hands and performance and like stability and consistency and things like that. But one of the things that makes us unique is because it's the same hand that goes on humans that goes on robots, we can actually train the robots to do the same tasks that our human users can do from the data that we can then collect from the hand through our uh programming interface.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Yeah, I mean, in terms of the haptic feature, is this a feed lap feedback loop? I mean, let's say, you know, your MPT is wearing this arm and you can feel something, a vibration. How does that convert into future actions like what we do now?

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Yeah, so for example, our human users have grabbed raspberries without crushing them, right? Because they can detect like as soon as they make contact, they get a vibration to know that, oh, I I um I've I grabbed this raspberry, holding like flimsy cups of water, right? Or like a drink, right, without crushing it. That's another example of like where it's been really important to get that haptic feedback so that you can do these really delicate tasks, but then our head can hold a hundred they can then go to the gym and then like do a hundred-pound kettlebell swing, and that's totally fine. So it gives them like the the dexterity and like the the um the feeling to be able to do like these very delicate tasks, but then also uh have the confidence to go out and like like lift weights.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

So, you know, if I'm grabbing a raspberry wizard hand and I feel I'm grabbing too hard, do I just relax my upper arm muscle or something like that to release it?

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Okay, yeah, I uh you would uh contract in the opposite direction and that would like open it up a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

I see. That's amazing. Okay. Also, you know, one when the other innovative component of your hardware system is that you use an open source API. So can you explain the significance of that?

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah, so uh on our GitHub, uh we've open sourced our programming interface, our API, and um you can stream all 30 of the touch sensors over Bluetooth, over USB connection, as well as uh control the position, velocity, and torque of all six of the motors that are in the hand. So uh that controls flexion extension and all five digits, and then also rotation as well. And then we can also feed all of that information back as well. So the position, the velocity, and torque over all six of those motors that are in the hand. So what then our robotics customers and our researchers, they're able to get set up with the hand in less than five minutes. So when they get the hand, they can just use our API in less than five minutes, get it working, and then start programming it. And that's really critical because then our customers can basically get going on what they want to do with the hand, whether it's like an industrial pick-in-place task or if it's folding laundry or if it's um activity as a daily living that humans might be doing.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Yeah, apparently folding laundry is extremely difficult for current uh robots.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

That's right, but not for our human users of the ability hand.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

Has any of your patrons actually trying to program their own hand using your API?

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Actually, yes. Um, so uh one of our um human users, so his name is Loyal Pasinsky. He um used to run the the show systems division at Disney Imagineering. So basically all of robotics at Disney Imagineering fell under him. And now he's like, I think he's like the head of Metaverse, like um like emerging technologies at Meta. Um and and so he he uh is he's he's um missing his hand. He was born without a hand, and um he got our hand for both personal reasons so that he could use it as uh as like a prosthetic hand, but also so he could program it and using our API to do like really cool stuff. And one of the interesting things that we saw him do recently was that the meta, like I think he was using Oculus or the meta glasses or something where yeah he was actually able to get them to recognize the hand on his like on his left side as like a natural hand, and so he could finally do bimanual tasks in like VR with a way that he'd never done before because he'd never had a hand on that side. So that was really exciting to see um like him do that, use it in a professional setting in addition to his personal life.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Another far-out

Robotics Crossover And Industrial Use

SPEAKER_00 31:44

question since we're on top of talking about dexterity, do you think these robotic hands can eventually be trained to do something a lot more skilled like surgery?

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Yeah, I think so. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Really?

SPEAKER_01 31:59

I don't I don't think it's gonna happen in the next year. I think it's gonna be in the next like five to ten years, but I uh I definitely think that that's uh that's in the realm of possibility, um, especially with the um improvements that we're seeing both on the hardware side and on the AI side. I think that that'll be doable.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

You know, just a joke. When I was a medical student, since I have no skills as a surgeon, I was in the operating room and my job was to retract the open the opening of the surgical field. Yep. And it was the worst job ever. And you get yelled at if you're not doing it right or fall asleep, which I did. But imagine you have a robotic hand to gently ply open the surgical field. You don't really need me there.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

You know, um, I I think sooner than that though, I could really see like surgical assistance, like being able to just like hand someone a tool, like a surgeon the the right tool. And uh uh I think that is going to be something that we will see in the next like couple years, even.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

So, yeah, we mentioned a lot. You you we discussed a little bit about the human robot flywheel that now you're actually opening up your horizon in terms of future customers. Now, I mean, obviously your origin was human prosthetics for patients as a huge market. And the second one now you just started is going to the industry. When did that start it? Like, how did you decide to make that pivot?

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Yeah, you know, it's it's interesting because from the beginning we were already selling into the robotics space. It just wasn't as large as it is now. And I came from a robotics lab. So my PhD, even though it's in neuroscience, it was actually in a uh in a robotics lab. So we always had a sense of knowing like what robotics people wanted. Um and that's like why we had an open source API, because we were like, that's something that researchers in robotics and human side would uh want as well. Um, and so when we well like launched this like uh nationwide at the end of 2021, beginning of 2022, Meta was an early purchaser uh of our hand. And they put it on a robot arm so they could do like reinforcement learning tasks with it. But that was like, you know, four years ago that they uh started doing those kinds of things. And it was like, I would say though, over the last couple of years, there's just been like an exponential increase on like the robotic side where it's kind of like um even though both sides are growing as a business for us, we see more business now on the robotic side than on the human side, just because it's been exploding so rapidly over the last couple of years.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Yeah, actually, you know, we did a little bit of economic study a couple years ago in the prosthetics market in general, is there's a lot of physical and economic factors that limit this the size of the overall market for prosthetics. One is most people who are missing limb are usually in healthcare scarce countries, that people don't have access to proper healthcare and or war-torn countries, you know. I mean, the the amount of people who are missing limb in our country, in the United States, for example, is probably on a relatively small size. So that definitely has a little bit of limitation there. So of all the robot that are now in the industry, so what are some of the most exciting projects? I mean, if you're allowed to disclose. I I know I'm I understand there's some stuff that's completing secrets, and I don't want someone to uh follow me around after this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

I I would say some of the automotive applications have been really cool. For example, Mercedes is using our hands to do like uh like built cars essentially through Atronics Humanoid Robot. And uh they've got a bunch of videos online where they're using like uh tools, like uh electronic screwdriver to like drill into like the chassis, as well as put really complex shaped uh parts together as well. Too that has been one of the coolest things to see that like um like our hands building cars, and then on the on the human side too, there's just been some like really incredible things as well. Like what uh the some of the things that our our human users have been able to do. So most recently, one of our uh more recent human users of the hand, he lost his Jamie Groshan, he lost his uh hand due to a fireworks accident a couple years ago, and he was going to play Division I baseball on a scholarship uh at San Native State,

Access, Affordability, And The Ability Fund

SPEAKER_01 36:08

and um that that ended that for him. But uh last year he got our hand and we had him throw out the first pitch at the San Francisco Giants game. But then we had this childhood baseball diamond, and I threw out a bunch of pitches to him, and he ended up hitting the world's first bionic home run and the subsequent nine home run, like the next nine after that, um, as well. And it was just so incredible to witness this because he didn't know he could do it, I didn't know he could do it. And for us to like then learn like that you know, some of these limitations exist more in our heads than than we think. Absolutely. Um, it it was just incredible to witness what what can be enabled.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Yeah, as much as this the market overall size compared to some other industry is small, I want to make sure I emphasize that there's large potential still in the prosthetics market because not every patient is actually have access to your hand.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Exactly. And I mean there's 10 million people worldwide who are missing hands. Um, and and the thing is is that with the volumes that we see on the robotic side, but the prices will go down enough that I think it will actually hit a price point that will work in a developing nation.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Yeah, I like to hear a little about that. You're scaling up and how do you make this more affordable to a lot of people? Patients.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Yeah, yeah. So so one way is just through pure volume, right? So the manufacturing at scale, like uh then we can uh get like costs even lower, then like prices even lower too. But uh, we've also started initiatives in particular. So one of those initiatives is called the Ability Fund, and this is in partnership with the Range of Motion Project, a nonprofit organization. And um, every um $25,000 that's donated to the ability fund will completely cover the entire like the cost of as well as a um uh all the medical services, all the clinical services to get a hand, a biotic hand fitted to an individual. And then um on top of that, it will actually donate a leg to someone in Guatemala or in Ecuador. So it's like an arm and a leg for 25k. And this is typically like a hundred to a hundred thousand to a hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of services and devices. And so for us to do that, it's uh like this is this has been an incredible service that we've um been able to provide. And we fit our first two patients on that already. So um our first one um was uh Ivan Krastav, who was born without his left hand. He was bullied as a kid for not having a hand. And then he um saw like one of his teachers showed him one of our videos, and he was just like, uh, you know, he's in South San Diego, and he's like, I need to visit him and see like this in person. And he brought his uh high school robotics club over to psionic, and we hooked him up to muscle sensors, and for the first time in his life, he controlled a hand on his left side. And uh and then a year later, yeah, he was one of our investors actually donated 25k to fund him to get uh a hand, and um, and now he's using it to like fly drones and like become like a commercial pilot, and so it's uh really exciting to see him grow and um go into that. And then uh our our second recipient, she is uh an occupational therapist, and she had a bionic hand, but her insurance said that she could only get one for her entire life. I remember what I said about those like hands breaking very easily, yeah. And she couldn't get it fixed, and she insurance would only cover one for her entire life, which makes no sense. Um that's crazy. Yeah, and so um through the ability fund, um uh she was able to then receive uh our hand and and then use it uh on a daily basis. So that was uh that was exciting for us.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

Yeah, it's I mean, I think the magic is not measured by money, it cannot be measured by dollar signs to enable another human being to fully experience that's incredible. Okay, so let's see. So, I mean, we're doing a lot of things now, and uh I have a couple concerns and and also full disclosure. Uh I am an investor in Psionic, so you may take this as a little bit of my personal

Scaling, Manufacturing, And Ethics

SPEAKER_00 40:20

bias, but I want to uh be also try to be objective as possible. I mean, I I don't know what the future is gonna be like, so I have a couple questions for you. Is one is I know that you're a very ambitious person, and I remember that you said you want you want psionic to be the next Tesla, and I fully endorse you for that. I'm behind you on that 100%, if not 100% 10. But how are you gonna do that? I mean, are you gonna create a gigafactory like Elon Musk? I mean, that sounds almost impossible. I mean, actually, it sounded it was impossible to most people when he wanted to do manufacture Tesla in in such a unique way and scale up. And uh, you know, I feel like Sonic is also at the juncture where you want to scale up and it just looks like a mountain that you have to climb. What are your some thoughts behind this?

SPEAKER_01 41:08

Yeah, I mean so one of the reasons why we moved to San Diego is that um there are strong there's a strong relationship with like Mexico. Um so Tijuana is 40 minutes away from us, Mexicali is like an hour and a half away from us, where they set up uh maquiladoras where there's like plants that you can actually do like high-volume manufacturing there. And um, that's uh one of the things that we're looking at is like, can we do high volume manufacturing? So for our next gen hand, can we do like 50,000, 100,000 hands like built in those facilities? And then we keep low volume manufacturing here in San Diego. Um, but we're keeping our options open. We might even just uh open up a factory here in the States as well, too, and then see if the economics work out for us to make um those volumes of the hands um hands here. And with the next generation hand that we're building, um we uh honestly, the way we're designing it, we want to make it in such a way that if we might actually be able to have hands-building hands. Yeah, it would be yeah, which would be really cool. So that way we could have like a close to like you know, lights out facility or like at least a highly, highly automated uh manufacturing process to make hands. Um so that's going to be that that's all the initiatives that we're working on, like for that next generation hand, so that like when it comes out, it'll be uh out of the gate and running.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

Yeah, you know what? It is not as far out. I have seen 3D printing companies print their own components. One example of that is HP. It actually prints our own components for the HP printer.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

That's that's awesome. So the MP like for the the multi-jet fusion. Yep. Nice, nice.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

Yeah, and also a lot of 3D printing companies just in general wanted to do that because it's such a great marketing tool. Like if the stuff that you make your gadgets work, because it's the printer, you can actually use it on your own product. That's an endorsement of quality right there.

SPEAKER_01 42:56

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And uh, we've definitely taken videos of our hands like screwing in parts of like another hand using like an electric screwdriver. So it's it's doable. And I think that's going to happen in the future.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

The the other question I have is a more philosophical is so you work with in the Navy and the military projects and stuff. What do you think in the future that how do you decide as a company where you want to go uh or where you don't want to go?

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Yeah, and you know, the thing is when we're when we're working with the the military and like the DOD, it's very particular in in uh helping to restore function to veterans who have have lost their their limbs in in the wars, right? Um and we are we're we're very against weaponizing like our our hands because we're in the business of building people up and not breaking them down, right? And so that that's important for us. But what we see as being very interesting on like the robotics and industrial side is just that there's so many tasks that humans are doing that in these. And these settings that are dangerous. So um like a lot of these assembly line tasks, like forges, right? Like if you're trying to pull something out of a forge and like you don't want to lose your hand doing that, but if you need a robot hand to do it instead, then that would save a lot of lives. Yes.

New Frontiers: Pharma, Music, And More

SPEAKER_01 44:18

So we're seeing a lot of these tasks that are dangerous um starting to be automated so that it would save human lives. But also for a lot of these uh manufacturing lines, um there's there are like large labor shortages to like build cars to like like Amazon has like a like a bunch of like labor shortages there too, right? And so to be able to provide automation solutions for for tasks there, to be able to like pick and place things in like pack them up and like uh stock shelves and things like that, then um uh yeah, I mean, that's going to be exciting that that we can then automate those things and then open up new jobs for that are that are safer and more interesting and um at uh the more intellectually stimulating event.

SPEAKER_00 45:03

I was just there's so many things going through my brain as you're as you're speaking. One, I was thinking about maybe these hands can work in a sterile environment, you know, in a pharma industry, doing biomanufacturing where you don't have to We we've all we've already been looking into some of those applications, actually.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

So Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:20

Well what about what about musicians? Can can you can your hand play music?

SPEAKER_01 45:25

Yeah, so we have been collaborating with a group uh called Fitness Musica. Um they're based out of New York. Um it's the brainchild of a uh of an incredible woman named Charlotte Cup Mole. And she basically is creating this robotic orchestra. Wow. So she was able to take our hand and put it on a universal robot arm, and they had it play piano alongside like a human playing piano, and then a uh they have a robotic cello as well. Um, and they built this like entire robotic orchestra, and it's just fascinating to see. Um, and it's uh it's so much fun collaborating with them.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Is there a video of that? I would love to see it.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Absolutely. Yeah, I can I can send you it.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

I think that's like the ultimate test of the all the mechanical properties we mentioned in terms of speed, compliability. Is that how you say it? Compliance or compliance, yeah. Yeah, and all that. I mean, you have to stretch. I have played piano a very short period of my time and I hate it. But but I I enjoy the music, but it is really hard to be a master in this field, and a lot of it is very physical, actually. Yeah, that's fascinating. I can't believe you're every single vertical I could possibly think of.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

I mean, that's the thing, our hands do so many different things, right? Like it it's it's ubiquitous, it's everyone has them.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Yeah, it is amazing. I mean, I I do believe that human for now is the best computer on earth. It's the human being. We're the best better than quantum. Now we reach the end of this interview. I don't want to miss this most important part of this interview, which is who are who is the human, which

Founder Habits, Grit, And Adaptation

SPEAKER_00 47:04

is you behind this company. So now I just want a uh kind of announcement also that you're still raising fund currently for series A and you're looking for a series lead investor. Um, five million dollar minimum, right? Okay, so if you don't have five million dollars, I'm just kidding, you can still listen to this podcast. Now, okay, so I know these 10 years is hard and fun and exciting in the same time, but what are some of the habits that you have you think really helped you going through those hard times?

SPEAKER_01 47:36

Yeah, um I think it's I think it's two things. One is um having grit, like just like when when it gets hard, just being able to push through it, right? Uh I mean, I'm to be completely honest, I'm working on average like 82 hours a week. Um, so it's it's more than two full-time jobs.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

Yeah. But a uh more than a doctor, to be honest. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 47:58

But the thing is is that like, you know, this is what I've wanted to do my whole life. And when we see the outcomes that we get with our human users, right? Like to be able to play baseball, to be like, you know, feel your daughter's hand, to feed your feed your granddaughter for the very first time, like make a pinch for the first time in 35 years. That's what that's why we do what we do. It keeps us motivated, it keeps us going, that everything that we do is for them. Um, and for that reason, the second thing is that is just having gratitude. Like I've wanted to do this my whole life, and I'm grateful that I'm in a position that I get to do what I've loved and what I've had a passion for my entire life. Um, and I think that it boils down to just those two things and just being able to like execute based on like written gratitude. And as far as habits go, the thing is is that I don't know, my my job changes so rapidly that I think the the one constant is being able to adapt to change. So maybe that's the the the habit, like the being being able to handle just things changing every single week. Like, you know, I was in Indianapolis this week for like a a health uh life tech health conference um uh over there. And then uh I'm I'm in San Diego for like a little like a week, and I think that's the longest I've been here this year, right? Because we're at CES, at JP Morgan, at um at all these different conferences. I was at a Shark Tank reunion as well, and so didn't know that existed.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:21

I didn't know I didn't know until this year that existed as well. So it was it was pretty neat. But like going through and just being able to like adapt to all those different things and still keep going, I think that's uh one of the things that really sets uh apart like like you know, successful founders um for companies.

SPEAKER_00 49:38

I do want to mention that every single email I get from you, I get even your team have the final, you know, usually uh, you know, at the end of the email, you always say with gratitude. Yeah, yeah. Every single email from your team, I believe. And that actually does make a difference to me. Yeah. I don't know if you really said that with sincerity or not.

SPEAKER_02 50:01

Yeah, and and we mean it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

And okay, for our younger audience, what are some of the habits or what kind of media consumption that you you do at all these

Practical Advice For Emerging Founders

SPEAKER_00 50:12

days? I don't know if you have time to read a book or blogs, or how do you get your information to stay current?

SPEAKER_01 50:18

Yeah, so I feel like there's there's several avenues. LinkedIn, actually, we we get a lot of our our like um like news from LinkedIn, uh like in the field, like robotics news. Like anytime there's like a a big robotics thing's happening, like we usually see it on LinkedIn first. And I feel like my algorithm has gotten like really tuned uh on LinkedIn, where it's just like every single like piece of content that I get on there is like really useful um and just says what's happening in the industry. So that that's been a big one for me. Um and I guess um we still, I mean, like uh, because a lot of this is still like cutting-edge technology. We're reading like um papers all the time, like from like Google Scholar.

SPEAKER_00 51:02

And so I've got alerts on that things on like Google Scholar is something I started to use this year because of this podcast. So several founders have told me that's how they get their information.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

Yeah, yeah, it's great because it keeps me up to date on like every paper that's coming up that's relevant um to what we do. Um and then attending conferences, right? So like we're we're at like uh all the prosthetics conferences, we're at all the robotics conferences as well, too. And so we always see like the cutting edge like technologies in that front as well. But yeah, I mean, I try to find time to like read novels, but I don't know. I it it always I I feel like I start a bunch of books, but I'm never able to finish them because Yeah, I have I have that, I have a lot of them. And then by the time I get back to it, it's just like I don't remember what happened anymore.

SPEAKER_00 51:48

Yeah, I I I totally understand. You don't have time for books. Now we're we're at the closing of this podcast. Do you have anything to say to our audience, you know, the younger, how you know, in terms of as a entrepreneur, if they want to found a company, any advice?

SPEAKER_01 52:02

Yeah, and um uh the the biggest thing is is to just get out there and do it. Um, because the thing is if you if you wait to for a perfect moment, you're never gonna find it. There's never a perfect time to start. So like the the you you'd want to start now. Um and when we started, like we didn't know how to do like 1% of the things that we we know how to do now. And we learned all of it just by doing it and making mistakes and failing, and then just repeating and and like um really honing that craft. Whether it was like mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, uh software engineering, like microcontroller programming, soldering things, like 3D printing, machining, all of that we we learned outside of the classroom. And that's the best thing I could suggest is do things outside of the classroom, start building, and then document it. Make sure that like you like you can build a portfolio online so people can see your work and what you contributed to it. That that's something that we always look for whenever we're hiring.

SPEAKER_00 53:02

That's excellent advice. I'm gonna share that with our interns as well. But thank you so much, Adil. I think I'm gonna invite you back in the future because I feel like I'm on this adventure with you.

SPEAKER_01 53:14

And uh I I would I'd be happy to, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

And adventure means unexpected things to happen, sometimes good, sometimes bad. And love to have a comrade on the road with you. Uh very exciting journey. So thank you so much for joining us, and I'll see you next time.

Closing And Disclaimer

SPEAKER_00 53:32

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The views expressed do not constitute medical or financial advice. The technologies and procedures discussed may not be commercially available or suitable for every case. Always consult with a licensed professional.