According to their website, Engineered Arts is the leading UK based designer and manufacturer of humanoid “entertainment robots”. http://www.EngineeredArts.co.uk
If you look at some of their Youtube videos with their characters like the Mesmer line, you will swear that they have the most realistic looking and acting robots in the world as of 2021!
These “entertainment robots” at Engineered Arts, like the Sophia robot at Hanson robotics are fixed at the base robots and are not made to walk and jump around unlike the full body moving and dancing robots at Boston Dynamics.
But lets get back to the story at Engineered Arts.
Will Jackson, the owner, started the company in 2005 building moveable puppets for entertainment projects and then decided that they could add more robot like features to their creations.
Their first project of this type was a non human looking robot called RoboThespian Mark 1 and from there they created a handful of amazingly realistic human like robots like their Mesmer characters.
The company makes money in several ways such as renting their hundreds of robots to museums and retail stores (called installations) where they can be operated remotely by the renters or owners to interact with people who walk by.
Engineered Arts also make money by building custom robots for people and their modular robot style allows the customer to take off the body parts and head and replace them with other ones.
Custom faces/heads can be made for a standard Mesmer robot based on customer supplied photographs and 3d imagery and the complete robots to resemble anyone can then be built and shipped within mere months!
They have over 100 robots located in various parts of the world in museums and elsewhere and have the software to repair and control them remotely.
The Tinman software is their main telepresence software that allows the operators/customer to move their robot remotely and speak through a microphone to give the person in front of the robot the impression that the robot has perfectly functioning AI capability able to understand and respond to any question like a human would.
They have also developed inhouse software called Tritium over the last 12 years to do the maintenance on their robots as well.
Their software is just about as amazing as their skill at designing realistic robots.
In terms of a job, the company does use Python so you certainly could work on your Python skills if you were thinking of applying for work at this incredible UK based company.
Their webpage seems to show about two dozen staff members from a variety of backgrounds with job titles like: senior software and embedded systems engineer, senior mechanical and 3d design engineer, mechanical research and development engineer, CNC machining Guru, apprentice machinist etc.
They also certainly show a level of playfulness in their corporate staff photos which is always a good sign for new hires.
We won’t be listing the companies net worth in comparison to other similar companies at this time.