Kinova

A Canadian lightweight robot-arm maker that started with wheelchair-mounted assistive arms; its Gen3 is a common research arm.

Kinova was founded in 2006 by Charles Deguire, now CEO, and Louis-Joseph L'Écuyer, and is headquartered in Boisbriand, Quebec, near Montreal. Several of Deguire's uncles have muscular dystrophy and rely on power wheelchairs, and one of them had built his own robot arm; the company's 2009 wheelchair-mounted assistive arm, JACO, was named after him. It later developed a lightweight research product line, with the Gen3 (available in 6- and 7-degree-of-freedom versions) becoming common in university labs. In February 2022 it raised CA$60 million — CA$40 million led by Graham Partners and CA$20 million from Canada's Strategic Innovation Fund — to expand into industrial automation, launching the industrial collaborative arm Link 6 that same year. In June 2026, marking its 20th anniversary, it released the surgical and endoscopic medical arm KIMA, with a 3-kilogram payload and under 13 kilograms of its own weight.

ExampleMounted on a power wheelchair, JACO helps a user with limited upper-body strength eat and open doors on their own.

Also called

Kinova Robotics

Related

Kinova Gen3 · 7-DoF Robot Arm · Collaborative Robot · Franka Emika Panda / Franka Research 3 · Universal Robots UR5e · Surgical Robot

Sources

Jaco - ROBOTS: Your Guide to the World of Robotics（IEEE）
Kinova raises $60 million in new financing（Newswire.ca）
Kinova Celebrates 20 Years of Innovation with the Launch of KIMA（Newswire.ca）

As of

2026-06