Hydraulics is a $750 billion market that hasn't seen a real breakthrough in actuation in decades. Hiten Sonpal is running the company trying to end it.

RISE Robotics started in 2011 with an MIT-affiliated team chasing an Iron Man-style exosuit. They could not find an actuator strong, fast, or efficient enough to build it, so they invented one — Beltdraulic, a fluid-free linear actuator that pulls with belts rather than pushing fluid. Then they made the decision that defined the company: drop the exosuit and go after the hydraulics market itself.

Hiten Sonpal joined as CEO two years ago to solve a problem that was never scientific. The technology worked. The patents — more than twenty of them — were solid. What the company needed was commercialization, and that is what Hiten had spent a career learning, first at iRobot's military busin ...