The reaction intelligence
robots have been missing.
Hinoki inserts a continuous-time neuromorphic control layer between sensors and actuators,allowing robotic systems to respond, adapt, and stabilize at the body level before the higher-level digital stack completes perception, inference, or planning.
Antler Japan 2026·Hardware validation underwayRobots have been given brains.
Arc gives them a nervous system.
Arc is inspired by the spinal reflex arc, the body’s fast local pathway from sensation to response.
In living systems, not every movement waits for the brain. The body senses, responds, adapts, and stabilizes through local physical loops operating in real time.
Arc brings this principle into robotics: a continuous-time control architecture that sits closer to sensors and actuators, enabling faster response, lower power consumption, adaptive behavior, and physical resilience.
How robots respond today, and how Arc responds.
How Arc integrates into existing robotic systems.
A fast local control layer for selected sensor–actuator loops.
Power advantage
Conventional control loops often spend energy moving sensor data through processors, memory, and inference layers before actuation. Arc is designed to handle fast physical responses locally, reducing unnecessary data movement and compute for selected control loops.
Phase 2 benchmarks will measure latency, energy per response, and adaptive stability against a digital baseline.
Phase 2 benchmark targets
Example applications
Three reflex-shaped paths: sensor → Arc → response.
Future Applications of Arc
Arc is designed for robotic systems where faster response, lower power consumption, adaptation, or resilience can improve real-world performance in the physical world.
Humanoid safety around humans.
Robots working near people need to react to contact, force change, imbalance, or unexpected movement faster than a full perception-to-planning loop can complete.
Arc is designed to add a fast local response layer between selected sensors and actuators, so the system can react immediately while the main controller remains in charge.
Use cases: Humanoids, collaborative robots, assistive systems, mobile manipulators
Gripper control under changing conditions.
Robotic grippers often struggle when objects vary in weight, surface, shape, or position. They may slip, crush delicate items, or require retuning between tasks.
Arc is designed to adapt inside the control loop, using local sensor feedback to adjust grip response as physical conditions change.
Use cases: Tactile sensing, adaptive grasping, pick-and-place, mobile manipulation
Stability when conditions degrade.
Robots operating in the real world face noisy sensors, shifting loads, vibration, and partial hardware degradation. Many systems slow down, stop, or require central intervention when conditions move outside expected parameters.
Arc is designed to support local stabilization and compensation in selected hardware loops before the broader system needs to intervene.
Use cases: Drones, mobile robots, quadrupeds, field robotics, assistive systems
Every platform that moves.
Arc delivers physical response at the speed physics demands, making safe human-robot coexistence commercially viable.
Tesla is targeting 100,000 Optimus units in 2026, and every one of them will operate near humans. McKinsey identified real-time safety response as the primary bottleneck blocking commercial deployment at scale. Current digital stacks are too slow for this problem.
Arc delivers the physical adaptation that precision requires, unlocking a control layer opportunity no software stack has reached.
The global industrial robotics market exceeds $300 billion, and the capability gap at the control layer remains largely unsolved. Force-controlled assembly at production throughput requires sensor feedback at the actuator, not the server.
Lose a limb or a rotor — the platform keeps moving.
NATO and allied defense programs are actively procuring robotic platforms for contested environments. Unpredictable terrain, adversarial conditions, physical damage. In these environments, Arc delivers the physical resilience defense deployment demands.
Arc adapts to the body that's wearing it, closing the loop between intent and motion at the speed of human movement.
The global exoskeleton and prosthetic markets are projected to surpass $30 billion by 2032, and clinical adoption is gated on natural-feeling response. Standard adaptive control can't match the body's own timescale. Arc delivers the real-time coupling that intuitive assistive movement requires.
Hardware validation is underway.
We are raising a pre-seed round to complete the benchmark and bring physical intelligence to robotic platforms at scale. Selected for Antler Japan 2026 Residency.
We are in active conversation with robotics engineers and research institutions across Japan, and selectively opening co-development discussions. If your platform could benefit from Arc, let's talk.