Shadow Robot Company

A north London company, founded in 1997, that builds the Shadow Dexterous Hand, a robot hand that closely copies the movement of a human hand.

About Shadow Robot Company

The Shadow Robot Company builds robot hands. Its best-known product is the Dexterous Hand, which copies the size, shape and movement of a human hand. According to a magazine profile, it has 24 joints driven by 20 motors in the forearm, and pressure sensors in the fingertips so it can feel what it holds. Most robot grippers can only open and close, and Shadow's pitch is that its hand can handle delicate, awkward objects. It can be controlled by pre-programmed routines or by a person wearing a motion-tracking glove, and it works with the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS), which many robotics teams use.

The company began in 1997, when a group of people who were building robots for fun, including a walking robot, were asked whether a firm could buy their prototype actuators (the parts that make a robot move). That led them to form a company. Its first robot hand sold about three years later, and the original walking robot is now in the Science Museum's collection. Managing Director Rich Walker has said that he values staff enjoying their work, and customers respecting the product, more than growth for its own sake. A government case study states the aim as moving from the research laboratory into the commercial world.

Shadow is based in London, in the Gospel Oak area of the north of the city, according to the profile we read. A UK government case study from around 2014 describes the company as London-based, and says it took part in a UK robotics mission to California. Over the years it has worked with universities and research groups such as Bielefeld University in Germany, with large organisations such as GSK, Siemens, NASA and MIT, and with OpenAI on a project to teach a robot hand to turn a cube. It has also done UK work on robots for nuclear clean-up with the National Nuclear Laboratory and Queen Mary University of London.

As for culture, Mr Walker describes himself as "a geeky kid who liked playing with computers", and the profile gives the impression of a small, hands-on engineering firm. It said the company had more than 40 employees at the time, up from 21 in an earlier case study, and had grown by more than 20% a year, mostly without outside help. Those figures are several years old, so check the company's site for a current picture. The company has said it is not pursuing prosthetic hands.

In a company of this size, the people are mechanical, electronics and software engineers, people who build and test hands by hand, and staff who deal with customers and run the business. If you like understanding how the human hand works and how to copy it, this is a rare UK firm that does exactly that. It also shows how a hobby project can become a lasting business.

What they do

• {'desc': 'A human-sized robot hand with many joints and fingertip sensors.', 'title': 'Shadow Dexterous Hand'}
• {'desc': 'Work with universities and industry on touch, control and remote operation.', 'title': 'Research and development projects'}
• {'desc': 'Demonstrations of robot hands controlled remotely with motion-tracking gloves and touch feedback.', 'title': 'Teleoperation systems'}

Key facts

• Founded in 1997 by a group of hobby robot builders
• London-based (Gospel Oak, north London)
• Original walking robot is in the Science Museum collection
• More than 40 employees at the time of the profile (dated); 21 in an earlier government case study

Website: www.shadowrobot.com