Abstract: “In 2014, I was lucky enough to be one of 5 people to start HEBI Robotics, with the dream of eventually making the task of building custom robots as easy as building with Lego. A few years later we are now 10 people, and our first product, a series of modular force-controlled actuators, is rapidly being adopted for research and development. This talk will discuss the technical aspects of developing force-controlled actuators and the software tools for controlling them, why we are pursuing series-elastic actuation, and various challenges that we face during development. I will also talk about what it’s like to be an engineer who is increasingly involved with the business aspects of a growing company.”