A 26-year-old Nigerian, Silas Adekunle, known for building the world’s first gaming robot, has become the highest paid in the field of robotic engineering.
Adekunle achieved the feat after signing a new deal with the world’s reputable software manufacturers, Apple Inc.
Adekunle is currently the founder and CEO of Reach Robotics, a company developing the world’s first gaming robots. He recently graduated with a First Class degree and has a four-year background in robotics.
Born in Lagos, Adekunle studied in Nigeria before relocating to the United Kingdom as a teenager. After completing his secondary school education, he proceeded to the University of the West of England where he graduated with a First Class degree in Robotics.
In 2013, he founded Reach Robotics and developed a lot of experience on robotics within a space of four years.
Adekunle was also a team leader of Robotics In Schools programme, a programme which encourages and pays attention to students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
The programme encouraged him to develop robotics to make education more entertaining for STEM students. In 2017 MekaMon, he released the world’s first gaming robot, with the special ability to customise the gaming bot to perform personalised functions.
The robotics engineer was also named as “Someone to Watch in 2018” by the Black Hedge Fund Group.
The initial launch of Mekamon sold 500 bots, generating $7.5 million. Following this feat, he received support from various organisations including London Venture Partners ($10 million) and Reach Robotics signed a deal with Apple securing exclusive sales in Apple stores.
“Impressed by the quality of his robots and their ability to show emotion with subtly-calibrated movements, Apple priced his four-legged “battle-bots” at $300 and has put them in nearly all of its stores in the United States and Britain.
Early customers skew towards male techies but a growing number of parents are buying the robots for their children to get them interested in STEM, Adekunle told Forbes in an interview earlier this year.
