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Space Robot Company Lands in Brooklyn Navy Yard

By Janet Upadhye | November 25, 2014 8:44am
 NASA integrates a Honeybee Robotics product — made in New York City — to the Mars Science Laboratory.
NASA integrates a Honeybee Robotics product — made in New York City — to the Mars Science Laboratory.
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Honeybee Robotics

BROOKLYN NAVY YARD — A space robot company has landed in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Honeybee Robotics, which manufactures robot parts that have been sent on missions to Mars, the moon and the Earth's orbit, recently moved its 50 employees to the Navy Yard after two years of waiting for available space.

The company was founded above a piano shop on the Lower East Side more than 30 years ago and later moved to offices in Midtown before moving to Brooklyn last week.

The shop is occupying a lab in Building 3 before moving to its permanent location in Building 128, which is currently being renovated.

They will have up to 8,000 square feet of space to not only design new technologies but also manufacture them.

The company's president, Kiel Davis, who has a degree from NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, said the new location also allows employees to collaborate with other shops in the same building.

"There are a lot of creative types out here that are inventing all manners of art and technology," he said. "It is really nice to be near such an innovative community."

Honeybee was created in 1983 and received its first NASA contract in 1986. It supplied the agency with technology — including "robot hands" that grind diamond dust and resin from Martian rocks — for the last three Mars missions.

Honeybee also built systems for drilling, coring and physical sampling of geological substances on Mars, the moon and asteroids.

In total, the company has sent parts into space approximately a dozen times.

From the Navy Yard they are set to develop an "intelligent drilling system" for NASA's 2020 trip to Mars.

“Locating our new facility at the Navy Yard will help us fulfill our goal to bring revolutionary robotics and automation products to market faster,” Davis said.