Case Study: HEBI Robotics achieves rapid real-time control development and faster customer ramp-up with MathWorks' MATLAB

HEBI Robotics Enables Rapid Development of Real-Time Control Algorithms for Robots Assembled from Smart Actuators

HEBI Robotics, a startup spun out of Carnegie Mellon, faced the challenge of letting researchers with diverse programming backgrounds rapidly develop real-time control software for robots built from its smart, Ethernet-enabled actuator modules. To bridge the gap between idea and implementation, HEBI turned to MathWorks tools—primarily MATLAB (and Optimization Toolbox)—to provide accessible APIs, example code, and logging/visualization that non-expert programmers could use to prototype and test control systems quickly.

Using MathWorks’ MATLAB, HEBI built a MATLAB-based API and example scripts (with an External Language Interface for Java and background threads) to achieve millisecond response times, perform kinematic analysis, and visualize logged data for fast debugging. The MathWorks-based workflow eliminated cross-platform interoperability issues, enabled HEBI to develop a balance controller in a day and assemble the Igor robot in about three weeks, and significantly shortened customer ramp-up time for adopting HEBI kits.

HEBI Robotics

Dave Rollinson

Cofounder and Robotics Engineer