Shadow Robot Company Ltd.
251 Liverpool Road
London
N1 1LX
UK
Company History

Shadow has been working in robotics for many years. These are a few highlights.

2006

Shadow Leg built by David Buckley delivered to North Carolina A & T University.

2005

Carnegie Mellon University selects the Shadow Dextrous Hand for their research work.

2005

NASA's Robonaut project, based at the Johnson Space Center, places an order for a Shadow Dextrous Hand with tactile sensing. The Hand is to be used to inspire their own Robonaut development, and experiment with grasping and manipulation algorithms.

2005-
2004

Prof Helge Ritter, winner of the Liebnitz prize (€2 million) places first order for the Shadow Dexterous Hand. He is professor at the Department of Information Science, University of Bielefeld, a world-leading expert in the principles of neural computation, in particular self-organizing and learning systems, and their application to machine vision, robot control and interactive man-machine interfaces.

2004

Shadow develops it's world-leading fingertip tactile sensor (34 proportional sensors in each fingertip).

2003

Shadow develops the world's best robotic fully-dexterous hand, ahead of NASA, DLR (the German space agency) and all Japanese companies and universities. It has 24 separately powered and controlled movements (compared to 24 for the human, and 16 for the maximum number achieved elsewhere)

2002

Robodex (Japan) Invited by the organisers to bring our Dexterous Hand and the original Shadow Biped, at a total cost of € 25,000, we were voted favourite Robot by an exit poll. Honda (Asimo) and SONY (sdrio) were not pleased!

2001

Awarded NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts) Grant of £ 75,000

2000

Awarded Millennium Product Status (for the Shadow Air Muscle)

1999

Shadow were invited to join CLAWAR -- the Climbing & Walking Robots Thematic Network

1998

Awarded a DTI SMART Award to develop our Dexterous Hand (£ 45,000)

1998

The Shadow Biped is listed as No 4 in The World's Greatest Android Projects on the Internet (below three projects in Japan, and above COG, the MIT android!)

1998

Portech, (manufacturers of the Robug eight legged climbing and walking robot for the Nuclear industry) commissioned Shadow to design a modular interchangeable leg using Shadow Air Muscles instead of the existing pneumatic cylinders. Project completed ahead of time, exceeding the spec. by factors of 2 for power and 1.3 for range of movement.

1998

Shadow Robot Company established

1998

Professor Hirochika Inoue of the Department of Mechano-Informatics, University of Tokyo, Japan, leader of MITI Japan's New Humanoid Project and also of the Japanese Ministry of Education's Large Project for Future Robotics, came to London to “see for himself” what Shadow were doing. Following his visit, his University placed a substantial order for Air Muscles.

1997

In collaboration with Professor Martin Fergusson-Pell of CDRI/ASPIRE, Shadow was jointly awarded a £ 22,000 grant towards the development of an aid for the disabled -- dubbed the Shadow Ranger, a device to maintain Range of Motion in the knee joint of MS sufferers.

1997

A quantity of Shadow Air Muscles were supplied to NASA for a robot arm designed by Salford University.

1996

Gold Medal for Best Robot at Robotix, the Robot Olympics at Glasgow, against competition from the major UK universities, and around the world.

1995

Launch of the Shadow website (www.shadow.org.uk).

1994

The Technology Enhancement Programme commissioned Shadow to create educational material introducing the Shadow Air Muscle to schools.

1991-
1988

Participation in DTI's Advanced Robotics Intiative (Domestic Robot group)

1990

Two Silver Medals at the 1st Robot Olympics at Glasgow.

1987

Shadow Project founded.

© Copyright Shadow Robot Company Ltd.

Phone: +44 (0)207 700 2487
251 Liverpool Road, London, N1 1LX, UK

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