President and CEO | Houston Mechatronics

Nicolaus Radford is the President and CEO at Houston Mechatronics where he is responsible for growing and positioning the company as a robotics and mechatronics leader specializing in both intelligent automation and electric vehicles. Prior to Houston Mechatronics, he spent 14 years at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in the Dexterous Robotics Laboratory. At NASA, Radford was the Principal Investigator (PI) for the Valkyrie project, a humanoid robot developed initially for disaster response outlined in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), and also served as the Deputy and Chief Engineer for Robonaut 2 (R2), a spaceflight humanoid robot, initially developed in partnership with General Motors. He was also the PI for NASA in DARPA-funded advanced electric machine research for robotics using Variable Flux Memory Motors (VFMMs), led NASA’s efforts in exoskeleton research for crew exercise and mobility assistance, and served as Co-PI for NASA on DARPA’s Warrior Web program which focused on wearable robotics for military applications. He holds a BS and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University.