The New York startup Kyber Labs is taking a novel approach to replicating the five-fingered capabilities of human hands.
The Brooklyn-based outfit, founded in 2022, is generating buzz with short demos of its AI-powered end effector rotating a nut at high speed and sensing a feather without tactile sensors. The company says it’s building a dual-arm robotic platform for tasks needing human-level precision like product assembly.
“Our hand can take a hammer hit but also detect a feather,” Kyber posted on X. “The finger moves until it meets a tiny resistance and stops, with tactile sensors. Back drivability and torque transparency let it feel the world through its own drive currents, enabling simple, reliable interaction.”
Kyber Labs was founded by Tyler Habowscki, a former SpaceX/Machina Labs engineer, and Yonatan Robbins, an industrial designer who’s created everything from medical devices to movie props. The startup has a lean engineering team and has raised an estimated $1.7 million in pre-seed funding.
Instead of conventional motors and gears, Kyber’s platform uses artificial muscle fibers. They act as electric motors that squeeze and pull when currents flow through them. Each artificial muscle is made from a flexible tube of wire coils and a magnet-filled slider that moves inside it. Kyber says the patented design lets the robot hand bend and stretch as needed and still work smoothly.
According to Kyber, the muscles are placed in pairs at each joint. When one pulls, the other relaxes, so the mechanical hand can control how much it moves and how stiff or soft a joint feels. Kyber’s hand can withstand similar to how human avoid injuries: by flexing and absorbing impact instead of fight it.
Kyber says it uses low-cost materials so that, when scaled, each unit could cost “hundreds of dollars, not thousands.” The team is also developing high-density tactile sensors for a sense of touch in the fingertips. The startup calls its approach to product development “hardware + AI,” meaning they’re iteratively improving the robot and its AI software over time.