Hiten Sonpal on RISE Robotics and Beltdraulic Actuators

Hiten Sonpal and the Machine Behind the World's Strongest Robotic Arm

RISE Robotics built a prototype arm that lifted 7,015 pounds and earned a Guinness World Records title. The more consequential part of the story is the actuator inside it and the commercialization decisions around it.

Hiten Sonpal joined Venture Step to explain Beltdraulic, RISE's belt-based alternative to hydraulic cylinders, and the problem of finding a first market for technology that could fit many machines but was not ready to solve every machine at once.

The Beltdraulic SuperJammer. Image from the official RISE Robotics product page; source-site terms apply.

The actuator begins with pulling

Hiten explains the system through the body. Muscles pull through fibers, and joints convert the pull into the motion we see.

Hydraulics create linear force by pressurizing and moving fluid. They are powerful, established, and naturally useful in many shock-heavy environments. The complete system also carries pumps, hoses, valves, seals, fluid, heat, maintenance, and the possibility of leaks.

RISE uses steel-reinforced polyurethane belts and pulleys inside an electromechanical package. The belts act as tension members. Their movement is converted into linear extension and retraction inside a cylinder-like form.

The belt construction has roots in modern elevators, where steel cords are protected by polyurethane rather than operating as exposed steel cable. RISE did not invent the underlying material. Its contribution is the way the belt and pulley system is packaged for high-force linear motion.

The company says selected Beltdraulic configurations can operate faster and more efficiently than comparable hydraulic systems. Hiten used three-times language in the interview and described three-times durability as an expectation. Those are company claims, not universal engineering constants. The current RISE cylinder page publishes a 20 kN, or 4,500 lbf, double-acting product and directs engineers to a datasheet and ordering guide.

The Air Force problem made the failure visible

The SuperJammer grew from work around munitions handling. Hiten described existing munitions-handling units as six-axis hydraulic systems. As the equipment ages, leakage and drift can force airmen to keep correcting a heavy load while aligning it with an aircraft.

The surrounding experience includes diesel noise, exhaust, hydraulic fluid, maintenance, and the precision required to handle a munition that may weigh thousands of pounds at the end of an extended arm. RISE's prototype was designed to manipulate the load electrically across six axes.

The record did not exist only for publicity. It made one technical fact legible. Guinness World Records independently verified that the Beltdraulic SuperJammer Arm lifted 3,181.95 kilograms, or 7,015 pounds, in Somerville on March 3, 2025.

That verification is narrow and valuable. It establishes the lift achieved by the prototype. It does not verify every RISE cylinder, a service-life projection, the economics of another machine, or all claims on the SuperJammer page.

The largest market was not the best first market

Construction looked like a natural destination. It uses heavy machinery and hydraulics at enormous scale.

It was also a punishing first application. Machines face shock, contamination, irregular duty cycles, and use that can depart from the designer's intention. A startup entering construction might need to solve many edge cases before learning whether the core technology creates enough value.

Hiten looked for customers who could meet the technology where it was. RISE found a mid-market natural-gas equipment company with recurring hydraulic-service work and a measurable throughput problem.

During the recording, a test for that application was audible in the background. Hiten explained that the team was using a pneumatic setup to simulate gas pressure and measure whether the system could meet the customer's throughput criteria. He also described a current three-month hydraulic service cycle and a hoped-for extension to nine months.

The service interval and resulting revenue model are RISE's test-stage expectations. They are not independently verified field results. Their value in the story is methodological: the customer had a baseline, a testable requirement, access to the machine, and an economic reason to compare the new system with the old one.

That is a more useful beachhead than a market that is merely large. The first customer should produce evidence the startup can carry elsewhere. It should not require the company to solve the worst version of every integration problem before it can learn.

Regeneration changes the energy path

Hiten also described the actuator's regenerative potential. When an external load back-drives an electric motor, the motor can act as a generator. In an appropriate system, energy from lowering a load can return to a battery or electrical bus.

The analogy is regenerative braking in an electric vehicle. The analogy explains the energy direction, not the amount recovered. Actual recovery depends on the motor, drive electronics, load, motion profile, storage system, and controls.

This distinction matters throughout E117. A mechanism can support a capability without guaranteeing a machine-level outcome. Engineering still has to establish how much energy returns, under which conditions, and what additional equipment is required.

The community round created another kind of signal

RISE had built an audience around climate technology, machinery, defense, and visible engineering. Some followers wanted to invest.

The company used Regulation Crowdfunding and later reported a $1.5 million oversubscribed community round. Hiten said the company had almost 3,000 investors and that the community produced advocacy, feedback, customer ideas, and introductions he had not expected.

The result should not be romanticized. The SEC requires Regulation Crowdfunding offerings to use a registered intermediary and imposes issuer disclosures, advertising limits, and ongoing reporting obligations. Investor.gov warns that early-stage crowdfunding investments can be speculative, illiquid, difficult to value, and lost entirely.

The fit came from an audience that existed before the campaign. Capital gave that audience another relationship with the company. It did not turn investor enthusiasm into proof of product-market fit.

Proof has layers

E117 contains several kinds of evidence that should not be flattened.

The interview explains Hiten's reasoning and RISE's current work. RISE's materials describe the technology, products, applications, and performance claims. Guinness verifies one record lift. SEC and Investor.gov materials establish the crowdfunding rules and risk boundary. Customer economics, service-life projections, commercial pipelines, and broad durability still require application-specific evidence.

That separation does not weaken the story. It shows what deep-tech commercialization actually demands.

A mechanism becomes meaningful when the company can connect it to a measured result. The measured result becomes useful when a customer can connect it to an operating problem. The operating problem becomes a business when the economics repeat beyond one custom deployment.

The record arm proved that the prototype could lift something extraordinary. The next work is more ordinary and more important: produce reliable value inside machines that have to operate every day.

Readers interested in the physical evaluation can continue with [[How to Test a Product Where It Will Actually Fail]] from Episode 119. Episode 116 offers another look at the adoption boundary around physical systems, while Episode 100 connects the commercialization choices back to the founder's operating system.

Sources

The interview is preserved in [[E117 Full Transcript]]. Current leadership and company context come from RISE Robotics. The current commercial cylinder is described on the RISE product page. The record is independently documented by Guinness World Records. The community-round claim comes from RISE's company release. The legal and investor-risk boundaries come from the SEC and Investor.gov.

AI assisted with organization, source comparison, and editorial review. Dalton Anderson's transcript and the linked public sources control the factual claims.