Dive Brief:

• Sarcos Robotics, a Salt Lake City-based firm which designs robotic exoskeletons that aid laborers and construction workers, further expanded last week. On March 28, the company announced it acquired Pittsburgh-based RE2 Robotics, which develops robotic systems for the aviation, construction, defense, energy and medical industries. 
• The deal was valued at $100 million, according to the release. It will bring together both companies' robotics systems and will expand Sarcos's presence in medical and subsea markets.
• The deal will also double the size of Sarcos's engineering team and enable the company to establish a second location, according to the release. 

Dive Insight:

Sarcos is the proprietor of the Guardian line of robots, such as the full-body Guardian X(O) exoskeleton, along with the tele-operated Guardian X(T). Sarcos's full-body X(O) model, the company claims, can ramp up productivity while also reducing the risk of injury. While exoskeletons aren't commonplace on jobsites yet, companies like Sarcos are betting on their usage and popularity going up. An investor report released last year had leasing prices at around $5,000 a month per suit.

Sarcos has been busy over the past year, starting off last April by going public via a $1.3 billion deal enabled through special purpose acquisition company Rotor Acquisition Corp., which provided the company with $496 million. In September, Sarcos announced its partnership with T-Mobile, which is bringing the 5G network to the robots to allow for better teleoperation.

For its part, RE2 has sold more than 650 robotic arm products capable of operating in unstructured environments since 2010, according to the release. The company also has a strong footprint in surgical robotics, aviation maintenance and construction automation. In 2021, the company generated around $15 million in revenue.

Sarcos expects to benefit from revenue associated with RE2's existing contracts, which include deals with the U.S. government to develop robotic systems for underwater and industrial use, a developmental partnership with a leading manufacturer and others, according to the release.

While the robotics industry is making strides, experts say that the technology is not intended to oust human workers.

"There's nothing in technology that is meant to replace people — it's meant to empower them, it's meant to allow them to do more and then get home safely at the same time," Meirav Oren, CEO and co-founder of Los Altos, California-based construction software firm Versatile, told Construction Dive last September.