Manoj Sahi Kumar

Inventor & Entrepreneur

As a serial entrepreneur in APAC & EMEA regions, he has kept pushing the limits of Robotics and Autonomous Systems through his ventures Mattr5, Elbots and Robots Alive, in addition to serving as an independent advisor to startups and MNCs.

He holds a Bachelor’s Degree with Distinction in Mechatronics, Double Master’s Degrees with Distinction in Innovation Design Engineering from Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art. He is also a Researcher at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

Inventing the future

“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. It was man’s ability to invent which has made human society what it is. The mental processes of inventions are still mysterious.

The first step of the inventor is to visualize by an act of imagination, a thing or a state of things which does not exist yet, and which appears in some way desirable.

The inventor can then start rationally arguing backwards from the invention, and forward from the means at disposal, until a way is found from one to the other.”

Mattrbot

Robotic Soft Material

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

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. When not on the wrist, it creates a self-bonding with the user itself.

Space Compass

Navigating to Planets

An artifact navigation compass that is free from the influence of gravity. 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. It switches 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 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

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

A light-weight, dexterous and easy to program robot based on the principle of Service Oriented Architecture and modular intelligent components, it offers higher flexibility in smart manufacturing.

Farm-in-Pocket

Consumer Photobioreactor

A consumer photobioreactor that cultivates microbes using UV+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 olfaction capability to sense RDX contamination in soil, higher density of receptacle hairs to transfer pollen, and greater number of wax glands to repair micro structures.

ElbotM

Elderly Mobility Robot

A robot that addresses the diminishing walking abilities in elderlies by incorporating adaptive walking function to support natural walk and using AI/ML to analyze the walking data, and providing active feedback.