[Editor’s Note: We’ve watched Equipois evolve from a startup to a successful company developing innovative mechanical assist technology to improve ergonomics in a variety of industries — here’s news of yet another award the company has received.]
LOS ANGELES–Equipois Inc., developer of the zeroG® mechanical arm technology, has been awarded a 2011 Technology Innovation Award from the Wall Street Journal. The company won the Innovation Award in the Manufacturing Technology category.
Eric Golden, Equipois’s CEO, said “The Wall Street Journal’s Innovation Award is one of the highest honors that a technology company can receive. We are honored and humbled to be among a group of winners that includes some of the world’s most admired companies and inspiring technologies. This recognition is a testament to the vast potential that the emerging field of exoskeletal technology offers – the ability to augment human brains, skills and talent with the stamina, safety, and precision of machines.”
Equipois’s zeroG® technology is a mechanical exoskeletal arm that enables workers to maneuver tools and other objects as if weightless, with unmatched freedom of motion. As a result, companies can significantly reduce workplace injuries and increase quality and productivity, with annual returns on investment that can reach 200-500%. Many of the world’s top companies in aerospace, automotive, heavy machinery, and other manufacturing industries have adopted zeroG® as a new best practice.
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, whose newly formed company NantWorks LLC is now the major investor in Equipois, said, “I am delighted that the Journal has bestowed this great honor on Equipois, a great company with a great future in the NantWorks family of companies, where we are converging many technologies to enhance human capabilities and quality of life. Manufacturing is critical to the health of the world economy, and Equipois’s technology represents the next evolutionary step of human labor in manufacturing.”
The Wall Street Journal’s award caps off a year of notable commendations for the five-year-old company, including the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2010 Patrick Soon-Shiong Innovation Award and the 2011 BritWeek UK Trade and Investment Innovation Award, which recognizes outstanding innovations in the UK-California business community. Also this year, Equipois was profiled by CNBC, CNN Money’s Innovation Nation, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the Los Angeles Times. The company’s newest product, the X-Ar™ exoskeletal arm support technology was also featured on CNN’s “Big I” segment, which highlights “big new ideas and innovations to help with big problems,” as well as in the July 2011 issue of Popular Science.