Deal focus: Meltin plans next stage in human evolution

The most efficient way of communicating a simple message or command requires translating a thought into muscular control of the mouth which in turn manipulates soundwaves until the concept is processed by another person or device. For Mark Kasuya, CEO of Japan's Meltin, this is wasting time.

Meltin is developing a suite of technologies that aims to make communication essentially instantaneous through brain-machine interfaces, as well as extend human abilities through bio-mechanical devices and bodily-controlled robots that the company calls avatars. This week, it raised a $17.7 million Series B round from SBI Investment, Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma and Dai-Ichi Life Insurance.

"Our technologies open up a new world of opportunities to human beings by taking them to the next stage of evolution," says Kasuya. "People have wonderful creativity, but the configuration and limited functionality of our bodies means that we can't reach our productivity potential. Cyborg technology is basically an upgrade of humanity."

Kasuya was still earning his PhD in robotics and artificial intelligence at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo when Meltin was initially hatched as an on-campus project in 2013. He spun out with CTO Tatsuya Seki in 2016 and remained a two-man team until Real Tech Fund, Sparx Asset Management and Japanese Organization for Medical Device Development provided a $2 million Series A last year.

The company now has eight full-time and 14 part-time employees and aims to use the new capital to roughly double its staff while constructing new avatars for experimental work. Medical devices for physical rehabilitation are high on the agenda as well, but no details have been disclosed. A commercial line of avatars is hoped to roll out by 2023.

These humanoid robots allow users to control their actions remotely via an array of body-connected sensors, including gloves that direct the movements of each robot finger. The idea is to allow people to instantly take up a far-flung job without traveling and enable work in hazardous environments. Meltin is in talks with the Japanese space agency Jaxa as well a power plant operator. Other use-cases are expected to include undersea infrastructure maintenance.

Kasuya's vision of the future is beyond the scope of most entrepreneurs in the sense that he is contemplating technology adoptions that could redefine what it means to be purely human. As such, Meltin is controlling its own progress by helping incubate two think-tanks for the fledgling field of bio-robotics: the Global Cyborg Acceleration Committee and, perhaps more importantly, the Global Cyborg Ethics Committee.

"If we want to create a cyborg society, we have to start discussing how cyborg technology is going to be used because there are risks that it can be misused," Kasuya says, noting that military applications are not necessarily out of the question for Meltin. "That means educating and thinking about the technology not only on the engineering side, but also by cultivating cyborg culture and ethics."

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• North Asia
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Japan
• SBI Holdings
• healthcare