Synapticon and Reynolds & Moore Partnership for Safe Humanoid Robots

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Synapticon and Reynolds & Moore support developers of humanoid and mobile robots as they work toward certification.

Synapticon, a developer of integrated drive technology and functional safety solutions for robotics, and Reynolds & Moore, a consulting firm specializing in functional safety engineering, have formed a partnership. Together, they support developers of humanoid and mobile robots as they work toward certification.

Humanoid robots are leaving the labs, and with that, the crucial question is shifting. It is no longer a matter of whether a robot can walk, but whether it is allowed to work in close proximity to people. The safety concepts that the industry has adopted from industrial robotics were developed for machines behind protective fences. If you cut off power to a robotic arm, it stops moving. If you cut it off to a humanoid, it falls. To close this gap, both are needed: a system-level safety architecture and the appropriate hardware to support it. This is exactly where the two companies complement each other.

“With humanoid robots, safety isn’t a feature you add at the end—it’s an architectural decision made right at the beginning,” explains Dr. Florian Weißhardt, Head of Synapticon Intelligence. “Most teams we speak with focus on getting a prototype up and running. As soon as they start thinking about deployment, they realize that the standards they need weren’t written for bipedal machines. Reynolds & Moore knows this terrain, and together we can guide teams through it instead of letting them figure it out the hard way.”

Two Partners, One Path to Certification

Reynolds & Moore brings expertise and consulting capabilities in functional safety engineering to North America and Europe, ranging from risk assessment and safety architecture design to validation and certification readiness. Synapticon contributes the components and the underlying system expertise: the Somanet servo drive families, ctilink actuators for robot joints, and the Positron Safety AI platform, which covers multi-axis safe motion, safe human detection, and the monitoring of operational AI. The platform is being developed in accordance with IEC 61508, ISO 13849, IEC 61800-5-2, ISO/IEC TS 22440, IEC 62998, and IEC 61496.

Together, the two companies cover the entire spectrum of making humanoid robots safe: from concept and risk assessment through implementation and integration to certification. Reynolds & Moore oversees the safety engineering and the path to a certified system, while Synapticon provides the drive technology and safety architecture upon which this process is based.

“We’re seeing more and more humanoid programs reach the same point,” says Nicole Sophie Christiansen, Chief Commercial Officer at Reynolds & Moore. “The robot works, the demo is convincing, and then the team has to figure out how the system can work safely alongside people and ultimately be certified. At that point, the architecture is largely set, and safety becomes a costly retrofit. When functional safety is already built into the drives and the motion platform, this conversation takes a completely different turn, and the path to deployment becomes significantly shorter. That’s why we wanted Synapticon to be part of our R&M Safety Partner Ecosystem.”