Silas Adekunle has risen to be not only one of the world’s most radical entrepreneurs but also the world’s best robotics engineer today.
The revolutionary robotic engineer has been awarded distinctive recognitions globally till recent.
The Black Hedge Fund Group named him as “Someone to Watch in 2018”. He was also listed in the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe: Technology.
In 2019, he was named by Forbes Africa as 30under30 in technology in Africa.
He was recently named one of the top 10 people under 35, changing the world for better by The Guardian in the UK too.
The 2019 One Young World award honored five young leaders –aged 35 and under – who were judged based on the positive impact of their business and how they are transforming the world.
Among these five young leaders was Silas Adekunle.
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, young Adekunle grew up in a well-to-do family but relocated to the UK with his family when he was 11 years old.
Throughout his growing years, he fiddled with amateur robotics; while getting ideas from YouTube and dabbling in code before he went on to do programming in C++ at university.
At nine, he built his first robot. With constant practice, he evolved immensely in his teenage experiments.
After his secondary school education, he proceeded West of England University, where he met Christopher Beck, co-founder and CTO of Reach Robotics, who was studying for his Ph.D. in computer science.
He also met John Rees, a robotics expert, and engineering consultant.
In 2013, he graduated with a first-class degree in Robotics and developed a lot of experience in robotics within a space of four years.
Simultaneously, the three of them partnered and co-founded Reach Robotics that same year.
Then, they started working with Adekunle’s robot prototype and developed it into MekaMon over the next few years.
During their interview with Forbes, Christopher Beck and Silas Adekunle pointed out that people were hostile towards the idea of something different. “People are used to clunky robots, and when you make it realistic, people either love it, or they’re freaked out,” Adekunle told Forbes.
Christopher Beck also said that there were criticisms against MekaMon being too complicated and expensive for people.
“Toy manufacturers who were stuck in their ways were saying, ‘You have to make it as cheap as possible. People will play with it for five minutes, then break it,” He said.
After several rejections when funds were sort for, they received support from various organizations, including London Venture Partners ($10 million).
They reached the turning point after putting pen to paper with software manufacturers, Apple Inc.
Adekunle became the world’s highest-paid engineer after his company, Reach Robotics signed a deal with Apple securing exclusive sales in Apple stores.
It was reported that Apple was “Impressed by the quality of his robots and their ability to show emotion with subtly-calibrated movements, Apple priced his four-legged “battle-bots” at $300 and has put them in nearly all of its stores in the United States and Britain.”
Silas Adekunle is the founder and CEO of Reach Robotics – a consumer robotics company that has become a world sensation by developing the world’s first gaming robots.
Reach Robotics is a company that aims to infuse gaming and augmented reality of performing functions.
It is a company that was established for the sole purpose of innovating the future of entertainment technology by merging gaming, robots, and augmented reality.
In 2017, he released the world’s first gaming robot, Mekanon, with the unique ability to perform personalized functions.
Within a short period, he successfully sold 500 bots and generated $7.5 million at the initial launch of Mekamon.
MekaMon is a smartphone-controlled robot using augmented reality to create battlefields.
Through MekaMon, Reach Robotics has created an exceptional video gaming platform that fuses both the real and simulated worlds while giving gamers an experience beyond their screen.
Players can control their gaming robots with a smartphone or tablet, as they have been designed to be compatible with both iOS and Android supported devices and rely on the phones’ cameras and infrared sensors.
Asides from this feat, another one of Adekunle’s achievements is his active participation in the area of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) with startups and solutions birthed.
Adekunle was a team leader of the Robotics In Schools program, a program that encourages and pays attention to students in Science (STEM).
The program encouraged him to develop robotics to make education more entertaining for STEM students. It was during his involvement in the program that he thought of developing robotics to make learning more fun for STEM students.
Adekunle stated that early customers tend to get around choosing male techies, but a promising number of parents are getting open-minded about getting their children interested in STEM.
So far, Adekunle seems to have taken over the world with his cutting-edge technology, and promises to bring better products to the global market. Adekunle says his secret to success is: balance, sharing ideas, time management, and being true to yourself.
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