The Washington Post photography blog In Sight recently spent the day seeing the real-world impact of a new kind of robot invented by Charlie Kemp and Henry Clever.

Kemp is an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech and Clever is a biomedical engineering graduate student. The Post’s Peter Adams documented how Kemp’s longtime collaborators Henry and Jane Evans have tested their Stretch RE1 assistive robot.

Adams' day with the couple is the subject of a Nov. 23 photo story on the blog.

“The day I arrived at Henry’s house this past summer, he was testing Kemp’s newest robot — the Stretch RE1,” Adams wrote. “Stretch was much smaller and more capable than other robots Henry had worked with in the past. Weighing 51 pounds, Stretch was almost entirely a robotic arm that moved up and down a four-foot shaft. A small motorized base enabled the robot to maneuver into tight places where it could ‘stretch’ its arm up to 20 inches outward to grasp or deliver objects.”

See the Stretch in action with the Evanses on the Post’s website. 

The Stretch robot is produced by Hello Robot Inc., which licenses intellectual property from Georgia Tech invented by Kemp. Kemp also is co-founder of the company and chief technology officer, and he receives royalties for sales made by the company and benefits from increases in the company’s value.