Creative Inventor

Frontier Technology & Innovation Specialist

Manoj Sahi Kumar is a subject matter specialist in Disruptive Innovation, Design Thinking, and Venture Management. He has been a serial entrepreneur in the APAC and EMEA regions for over a decade, creating new ventures – Mattr5, Elbots, and Robots Alive, in addition to serving as a mentor to Frontier Technologies startups and advisor to over 10 multinational corporations.*

He holds a Bachelor’s Degree with Distinction in Mechatronics – Applied AI & Robotics, Double Master’s Degrees with Distinction in Innovation Design Engineering from both Imperial College London (Imperial) and the Royal College of Art (RCA), United Kingdom.

Co-inventing the Sustainable Future

with organizations & individuals including but not limited to

Atlas Copco, KAIST, Panasonic Corporation, KDDI, Tokyo Electron, Denso Robotics, Mitsubishi Electric,
Daiwa House Industry, Nidec Corporation, Fanuc Corporation, Omron Corporation, Bandai Namco, Kawasaki

A few work examples that illustrate why & how Innovation & Design Thinking creates intriguing outcomes

Space-Grounded

Smart Device for Astronauts & Deep Space Explorers

A pocket-sized device that generates petrichor and increases specific brain chemicals, Serotonin and Norepinephrine.

Mattrbot

Robotic Soft Material

Imagine a future where “material is a robot”. Materials that can sense, actuate, compute, and communicate. Mattrbot is an initiative using AI and design thinking to create the materials for autonomous systems of the future

Liwa

Watch that Breathes

A levitating watch that shares the user’s breath with others and gives a sense of human bonding through non-verbal communication when placed on the wrist, but when not on the wrist, it creates a self-bond with the user itself

Space Compass

Interplanetary Navigation

An artifact navigation compass that is free from the influence of gravity as it points towards the planetary positions in the solar system and creates intriguing interactions with the space travelers

Boston Dynamics

Evaluating RL on Atlas

A framework that benchmarks the latest reinforcement learning algorithms, Hindsight Experience Replay (HER), and Deep Q Network (DQN), on a simulated Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics

CarriRo

Logistics Robot Cart

A logistics support robot with autonomous driving function and “user following” capabilities by switching between various modes of “Assist-Tracking-Autonomous” during operations, from semi-autonomous to autonomous

Sensoids

Sensing a Human

An early-stage non-contact human sensing system for detecting the presence and identity of a human indoors and outdoors irrespective of light conditions with the aim to incorporate it in intelligent ambiance and robotic platforms

Dynawear

Wearable Robots

A collection of smart wearables that utilize wearable sensors along with mechanical parts based on soft polymers to create, move, and transform the garments from one shape into another

Dhii

Collaborative Robot for SMEs

A light-weight, dexterous, and easy to program robot based on the principle of service-oriented architecture and modular intelligent components to offer higher flexibility in smart manufacturing

Farm-in-Pocket

Consumer Photobioreactor

A consumer photobioreactor that cultivates microbes using UV and CO2 and harvests high-density synthesized protein as an alternative source of food nutrients while advocating for nutrient consumption at the point of production

Transgenesis Life

Creating a Transgenic Bee

A design-driven work to create and investigate a transgenic bee having better olfactory capability to sense RDX contamination in soil, higher density of receptacle hairs to transfer pollen, and a greater number of wax glands to repair microstructures

ElbotM

Elderly Mobility Robot

A robot that addresses the diminishing walking abilities of the elderly by incorporating an adaptive walking function to support natural walking, using machine learning (AI/ML) to analyze the walking data, and providing active feedback