Ghost Robotics

Ghost Robotics is a Philadelphia-based company that develops quadrupedal robots, primarily for military and government applications. Founded in 2015 by Avik De, Gavin Kenneally, and Jiren Parikh as a spin-off from the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Lab, Ghost Robotics specializes in creating agile, all-weather autonomous four-legged robots known as Quadrupedal Unmanned Ground Vehicles (Q-UGVs). The company's flagship product is the Vision 60, a mid-sized high-endurance robot designed for defense, homeland, and enterprise applications. The Vision 60 weighs 51kg, can carry payloads up to 10kg, and is capable of traversing various terrains including rocks, sand, hills, and stairs. It can also swim when equipped with Onyx Industries' Nautical Autonomous Unmanned Tail (NAUT).

Ghost Robotics' robots utilize innovative direct-drive electric motors, which provide power, virtual compliance, and integrated sensing without the need for gearboxes or elastic elements. This design allows for quick adaptation to new environments and enables the robots to operate in unknown conditions, even when vision sensors fail. The Vision 60 is controlled by an operator using a control pad and can be equipped with various sensors including RGB, time-of-flight, thermal/infrared, and LIDAR imaging systems. It uses Wi-Fi and dual-sim 4G/LTE communications, with 5G connectivity in trials as of September 2022.