Terms of use.

Who you are agreeing with

These Terms of Use ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Kinetic Robotics ("Kinetic Robotics", "we", "us"), the operator of kineticrobotic.com and the seller of the Myo-20 quasi-direct-drive actuator (the "Product").

By browsing this site, submitting a support request, joining a notification list or placing a pre-order, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated here by reference. If you are agreeing on behalf of a company, university or other organisation, you confirm you are authorised to bind it, and "you" means that organisation.

You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority where you live, to place an order.

Using the website

You may use this site for your own information and to evaluate, order and operate the Product. You may not:

• interfere with the site's operation, or attempt to access any part of it, any account, or any connected system you have not been granted access to;
• probe, scan or test the security of the site or its checkout, or bypass any rate limit or access control — other than through the coordinated disclosure route in § 11;
• submit an order, price, quantity or shipping destination you know to be false, or attempt to alter the amount charged for an order;
• use automated means to collect content from the site at a scale that degrades it for others, or to reproduce it as a competing publication;
• remove or obscure any proprietary notice on the site, the documentation or the Product; or
• use the site in violation of any applicable law, or to infringe anyone's rights.

We may change, suspend or withdraw any part of the site at any time. We try to keep it accurate and available, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free.

What a pre-order is

The Product is sold ahead of its first manufacturing run. When you place a pre-order:

• There is no confirmed ship date. We publish milestones rather than dates we cannot hold. Any timeline you see anywhere — this site, an email, a conversation — is an estimate and not a delivery commitment or a term of this agreement.
• Your order is a reservation in a queue, filled in the order received once units exist.
• We will email you at every production milestone, including any slip, at the address you gave at checkout.
• You may cancel for a full refund at any point before your unit ships, for any reason, including because a revised timeline no longer suits you. See § 6.

Your order is an offer to buy, not a concluded contract. A contract forms when we accept it, which we do by confirming the order. We may decline or cancel an order — and will refund it in full — where the Product or a price was listed in error, where we cannot lawfully supply you, where we cannot ship to your destination, where we suspect fraud or resale in breach of these Terms, or where the manufacturing run does not proceed.

If the run does not proceed at all, you get every cent back. That is not a discretionary refund; it is the condition on which the money was taken.

Price, payment, shipping and tax

What you are charged

The Product is US$299 per unit, which covers the actuator and its matched control board as a single assembled and tested unit. The full amount is charged once, at checkout. There is no separate deposit and no balance due on shipment. Power supply, host controller and mounting hardware are not included.

Shipping is charged per unit and is calculated from the delivery address you enter at checkout, so the total rises with both the number of units and the distance travelled. The amount shown before you confirm is the amount charged.

Prices are in US dollars and exclude any sales, use or similar tax, which is added at checkout where we are required to collect it. Where a tax, duty or customs charge is levied on delivery rather than collected by us, it is yours to pay.

Payment

Payments are processed by Stripe under Stripe's own terms. Card details are entered directly into Stripe's payment form and are never sent to, processed by, or stored on our servers. You warrant that the payment method is yours to use and that the billing information you give is accurate. If a payment is reversed or charged back other than under § 6, we may cancel the order.

Where we ship

The first production run ships within the United States only. The countries the checkout will accept are the definitive list; an address outside them cannot be ordered to, and no amount of entering one changes where the parcel goes. If you are outside the US, tell us and we will let you know when we open up.

Risk of loss and title pass to you on delivery to the address you gave. If a parcel arrives damaged or does not arrive, contact us — do not leave it; carrier claims have deadlines.

Specifications and estimates

Published specifications are targets for the first production run, validated on prototype hardware rather than measured on production units. Figures still estimated rather than measured are marked as such on the comparison page. Renders, photographs and drawings are illustrative; the delivered unit may differ cosmetically.

We may change a specification, a material or a supplier where the change does not materially reduce the Product's performance or function. If a final measured value lands below a published target in a way that matters, we will tell affected pre-order customers directly and offer a refund — whether or not you have taken delivery, and whether or not the 30-day windows below have run.

Nothing on this site is a promise that the Product is fit for your particular application. Deciding that is your job, and § 8 and § 9 matter to it.

Cancellation, returns and refunds

Before your unit ships

Cancel at any time, for any reason, for a full refund of everything you paid, including any shipping charged. Email support@kineticrobotic.com or open a ticket on the support page.

After delivery — the 30-day money-back guarantee

Every pre-order carries a 30-day money-back guarantee running from your delivery date. Ask within 30 days and we will accept the Product back and refund the purchase price. You pay return shipping for a change-of-mind return; we pay it where the unit was defective or not what we described.

A returned unit must be complete and in a condition consistent with reasonable evaluation — bench testing, integration trials and mounting are all fine. We may reduce a refund to reflect damage beyond that, and a unit that has been operated outside the published electrical and thermal limits, dismantled beyond its documented serviceable parts, or physically modified is not returnable under this guarantee.

How refunds are paid

Refunds go back to the original payment method through Stripe, usually within 5–10 business days of approval, and the arrival time is your bank's rather than ours. Original shipping is refunded on a cancellation before shipment and on a defective or misdescribed unit; on a change-of-mind return after delivery it is not.

Contact us before sending anything back — we will give you a return address and a reference. Unannounced returns are hard to match to an order.

None of this limits any statutory right you have as a consumer that cannot be excluded by agreement.

Limited warranty

We warrant to the original purchaser that, for 30 days from the delivery date, the Product will be free from defects in materials and workmanship. If it is not, tell us within that window and we will, at your option and subject to availability, refund the purchase price or replace the unit. That is the entire remedy under this warranty.

This warranty does not cover:

• wear or damage from operating outside the published electrical and thermal limits — the limits in the specification table on the main page and in the documentation are the boundary, and they are the customer's to respect;
• over-voltage, reverse polarity, a supply without adequate discharge provision for the stored bus energy, or connection to a bus outside the specified 24–48 V range;
• mechanical overload, impact, crash damage, or loading the output beyond its rated torque;
• corrosion, liquid ingress, or use in an environment beyond the Product's stated rating;
• dismantling, machining or modification beyond the documented serviceable parts, or repair attempted by anyone other than us;
• firmware you have altered, or a fault caused by your host controller, wiring or software; or
• normal cosmetic wear.

The warranty runs to the original purchaser and is not transferable on resale. It sits alongside the money-back guarantee in § 6 rather than replacing it, and alongside any non-excludable statutory right.

Safe use — read this one properly

The Product is a component for integration by technically qualified users. It is not a finished consumer appliance, it is not supplied with a guard or an enclosure, and it is not safety-certified as a machine. Before you power it up, you accept responsibility for the following.

Mechanical hazard

The output produces up to 20 N·m of torque and is highly backdrivable by design, which is the point of a quasi-direct-drive joint. It can move without warning under command, under gravity, or under stored energy in your own mechanism. Keep hands and loose items clear of the output and anything attached to it. Guard moving assemblies. Assume a joint can move whenever the bus is live.

Electrical hazard

The Product runs on a 24–48 V DC bus, and peak torque figures are quoted at peak phase current. Size your supply and conductors for the duty cycle you actually intend to run, not for the peak number alone. Discharge circuitry is integrated for basic protection, but energy remains stored on the bus after power is removed. Allow it to discharge before handling wiring, and never rely on "the switch is off" as an isolation method.

Thermal hazard

Sustained operation heats the housing and the stator. Surfaces can reach temperatures that burn on contact and that will damage the unit if the published thermal limits are exceeded. Provide the airflow or heat path your duty cycle demands, and honour the limits in the documentation.

Your obligations as the integrator

• Read the documentation before first power-up, and keep to the published electrical, mechanical and thermal limits.
• Provide an emergency stop and a means of de-energising the machine you build.
• Carry out your own risk assessment, guarding and testing for the machine as a whole, and obtain any certification your application or jurisdiction requires — we certify a component, not your machine.
• Keep people clear during commissioning and while tuning control loops. A mistuned loop is an unstable joint.
• Ensure whoever operates or maintains it is trained for it.

Applications the Product is not for

The Product is not designed, tested or certified for safety-critical or life-critical use. You may not incorporate it into, and must not use it in:

• medical devices, surgical or patient-contacting equipment, prosthetics or any application where a failure could cause injury or affect a person's health;
• aircraft, spacecraft, or any aviation or aerospace application;
• nuclear facilities, or any installation where a failure could cause a release of hazardous material;
• weapons, munitions or weapon-delivery systems;
• autonomous or driver-assistance systems in vehicles operating on public roads; or
• any other application where a failure of the Product could reasonably be expected to cause death, personal injury, or severe physical, environmental or property damage.

Using the Product in any of these is entirely at your own risk, voids the warranty in § 7, and you indemnify us for it under § 14.

Intellectual property, documentation and firmware

The site, its text, images, renders, drawings, specifications, documentation and the Product's designs and firmware are owned by Kinetic Robotics or our licensors and are protected by intellectual property law. "Kinetic Robotics", "Myo-20" and our logo are our marks; buying a Product does not license them.

Buying a Product gives you ownership of that unit of hardware and a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the firmware embedded in it, as embedded, for its normal operation.

The command set and interface documentation are open on purpose. You are free to read the documentation and write, run and distribute your own host software, drivers, libraries and integrations against the documented interfaces, including commercially and including under an open-source licence of your choosing. You are not locked into a proprietary SDK, and nothing here is intended to discourage you from publishing what you build.

What you may not do is copy the Product's mechanical or electronic design to manufacture a competing product, decompile or reverse-engineer the firmware except to the extent that right cannot lawfully be excluded, or redistribute our documentation as your own. Third-party open-source components in the firmware are licensed under their own terms, which prevail over this section for those components; notices are in the documentation.

Any feedback, bug report or suggestion you send us, we may use freely and without obligation. We will not treat it as confidential unless you have a written agreement with us that says otherwise — so do not send us anything confidential through the support form.

Reporting a security or safety problem

If you find a security vulnerability in this site or in the Product, or a safety defect in the hardware, email support@kineticrobotic.com with enough detail to reproduce it. Give us a reasonable opportunity to fix it before publishing.

Good-faith research and reporting under this section is not a breach of § 2, provided you test only against your own orders and your own unit, do not access or modify anyone else's data, do not degrade the service for others, and do not attempt real transactions against other people's payment methods.

Disclaimers

Except for the limited warranty in § 7, the money-back guarantee in § 6, the refund commitments in § 3 and § 5, and any right you have that cannot lawfully be excluded, the site and the Product are provided "as is" and "as available", and we disclaim all other warranties, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement.

In particular we do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted or error-free, that the documentation is free of errors or omissions, that the Product will meet requirements we have not agreed in writing, or that it is suitable for your application. Third-party sites and services we link to are not ours and we are not responsible for them.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, nor for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, loss of use, business interruption, cost of substitute goods, or damage to other equipment, property or work-in-progress — whether in contract, tort, negligence, strict liability or otherwise, and whether or not we were told such damages were possible.

Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to these Terms, the site or the Product is limited to the greater of the amount you actually paid us for the Product giving rise to the claim, or US$100.

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability for: death or personal injury caused by our negligence; fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; our liability under applicable product liability law; or anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. If your jurisdiction does not allow some of these exclusions, they apply to you only to the extent permitted, and the rest stands.

These limits are a deliberate allocation of risk that reflects the price. The Product is a $299 component you integrate into a machine we do not design, build, guard or commission; the value at risk in your machine is necessarily many times the value of the part. If the resulting allocation does not work for your application, do not buy the Product.

Your indemnity

You will indemnify, defend and hold harmless Kinetic Robotics and its officers, employees and contractors from any claim, loss, liability, damage, cost or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from: your breach of these Terms; your use of the Product in an application excluded by § 9; your failure to meet the integrator obligations in § 8; the design, manufacture, guarding, certification or operation of any machine or system into which you incorporate the Product; or your infringement of anyone's rights. This does not apply to the extent the claim arises from our own breach of these Terms or our negligence.

Export control and end use

You agree to comply with all applicable export control and sanctions laws, including those of the United States. You confirm you are not located in, ordinarily resident in, or ordering on behalf of anyone in a country or region subject to comprehensive sanctions, and that you are not a person on a restricted or denied-party list. You will not export, re-export or transfer the Product, its firmware or its documentation in breach of those laws, nor use any of it in connection with weapons, munitions, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons activity.

Governing law, binding arbitration and waiver of claims

Governing law

These Terms, your order, and any dispute arising out of or relating to either — whether in contract, tort, statute, or any other theory — are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply. This arbitration agreement is governed by the Federal Arbitration Act.

Talk to us first

Before starting arbitration, you must contact us and give us a chance to fix it. Email support@kineticrobotic.com describing the problem and what you want done. Neither of us may begin arbitration for 60 days after that notice. This step is a condition of bringing a claim, and it usually ends the matter — most things get sorted by email in a week.

Binding individual arbitration

If we cannot resolve it, you and we agree that any dispute will be resolved by final and binding arbitration, not in court. You are giving up the right to sue in court and the right to a trial by jury. An arbitrator's decisions are subject to only very limited review.

Arbitration is administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before a single arbitrator, seated in Illinois, in English. A claim under US$10,000 may be decided on documents alone, or by telephone or video, at your election — you do not have to travel. The arbitrator may award any relief a court could award to you individually, and must honour the limits in § 13. Judgment on the award may be entered by any court with jurisdiction.

No class actions, ever

Claims may be brought only in your individual capacity, never as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated, private attorney general or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims, may not preside over any form of representative or class proceeding, and may not award relief to anyone who is not a party.

This class waiver is essential to this agreement. If it is found unenforceable as to a particular claim or request for relief, that claim or request — and only that one — is severed from arbitration and heard in the courts named below, while everything else stays in arbitration. If the class waiver is found unenforceable as a whole, this entire arbitration section is void and disputes go to those courts instead.

Opting out

You may reject this arbitration agreement by emailing support@kineticrobotic.com with the subject "Arbitration opt-out", your name and your order number, within 30 days of placing your first order. Opting out costs you nothing, affects nothing else — not your price, your delivery, your refund rights or your warranty — and leaves the rest of these Terms in force. If you opt out, disputes go to the courts named below.

Courts, where arbitration does not apply

Where a dispute is not subject to arbitration — because you opted out, because it is a small-claims matter either of us chooses to bring there, because it is a request for injunctive relief to protect intellectual property or confidential information, or because a court holds arbitration does not apply — you and we submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Illinois, and each of us irrevocably waives any right to trial by jury in any such proceeding.

One year to bring a claim

Any claim arising out of or relating to these Terms, the site or the Product must be brought within ONE (1) YEAR of the date it arose, or it is permanently barred — whether in arbitration or in court. To the extent the law allows, this replaces any longer limitation period that would otherwise apply.

Release

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, you release and forever discharge Kinetic Robotics and its officers, employees, contractors, suppliers and successors from any and all claims, demands, causes of action, losses, damages and liabilities of every kind — known or unknown, suspected or unsuspected, foreseen or unforeseen — arising out of or relating to the site, these Terms, the Product, or any machine, system or application into which the Product is incorporated. If you are a California resident, you knowingly waive California Civil Code § 1542 and any similar law in another jurisdiction, which would otherwise preserve claims you do not know about at the time of release.

What cannot be waived

This section is written to go as far as the law allows and no further, because a clause that overreaches is a clause a court throws out. It does not waive, and nothing in these Terms waives: liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence; fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; liability under applicable product liability law; your right to bring an individual action in small claims court; your right to report a matter to a government agency or to participate in an agency investigation; or any other right that cannot lawfully be waived or limited. If you are a consumer, this section does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory consumer law where you live. These carve-outs are what make the rest of this section hold up; they are here on purpose.

These Terms override any other document

Entire agreement

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and your order confirmation, are the complete and exclusive agreement between you and Kinetic Robotics regarding the site, your order and the Product. They supersede and replace all prior and contemporaneous proposals, quotations, discussions, emails, representations and understandings, written or oral, on those subjects. Neither of us relies on any statement not set out in them — except that nothing here excludes liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

Your documents do not apply

Your order is expressly conditioned on your assent to these Terms and to these Terms alone. Any additional, different or conflicting term in any document you issue, submit, reference or require — including a purchase order, requisition, vendor registration, supplier agreement, procurement portal click-through, non-disclosure agreement, insurance or indemnity schedule, invoice acknowledgement, or any set of terms and conditions of your own — is rejected, void and of no effect, and forms no part of the agreement between us.

This applies even if such a document is signed, countersigned, initialled, accepted, acknowledged, stamped or otherwise processed by us or by anyone acting for us, and even if we ship the Product or accept payment afterwards. Our performance of an order is not acceptance of your terms, and no course of dealing, course of performance, usage of trade, or failure by us to object to your document operates as acceptance of it or as a waiver of this section.

To the extent a signed document is nevertheless held to have effect, these Terms control wherever it conflicts with them, and the conflicting provision is limited or severed from that document rather than from these Terms.

How this agreement can actually be changed

No amendment, waiver or additional term binds us unless it is in writing, expressly identifies these Terms and states that it amends them, and is signed by an authorised officer of Kinetic Robotics. Nobody else — no employee, contractor, reseller, distributor or agent — has authority to vary these Terms, to make a commitment on delivery dates or specifications, or to grant a right not written here. A statement by any of them that conflicts with these Terms is not binding on us and you may not rely on it.

The one thing we do not claim: this section is about your paperwork and our staff's informal promises, not a claim that we can never be bound by anything we deliberately sign. A properly executed amendment under the paragraph above changes this agreement, exactly as it says it does.

General terms

Changes. We may update these Terms. The effective date at the top of this page changes when we do, and a material change is announced on this page. The version in force for your order is the version published when you placed it — we do not apply later changes retroactively to an order already taken. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated Terms for future use.

Severability and waiver. If a provision is held unenforceable, it is limited to the minimum extent necessary or severed, and the remainder of these Terms stays in full force — the parties intend every other provision to survive independently. Not enforcing a provision is not a waiver of it, and a waiver on one occasion is not a waiver on any other.

Survival. Sections that by their nature should outlast the sale do: § 10 (intellectual property), § 12 (disclaimers), § 13 (limitation of liability), § 14 (indemnity), § 16 (arbitration, class waiver, release and the one-year limit) and this section.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them to a successor in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, on notice to you.

Force majeure. Neither of us is liable for a delay or failure caused by something genuinely outside our reasonable control — including component shortages, factory or carrier failures, natural events, war, or government action. It does not excuse us from refunding you under § 6.

No third-party rights. These Terms do not give rights to anyone who is not a party to them.

Notices. We will use the email address on your order. You should use support@kineticrobotic.com.

Headings and summaries. The "in plain English" boxes are there to be helpful and are not a substitute for the clause they precede. If a summary and a clause conflict, the clause governs.

Contact

Questions about these Terms, an order, a return or a warranty claim:

• Email — support@kineticrobotic.com
• Support ticket — the support page, which gives you a reference number so nothing gets lost

Pre-sales questions are welcome at either. See also the FAQ, which answers most of what people ask before ordering, and the Privacy Policy for how we handle your information.