Summary
Brennand Pierce is a co-founder of Bear Robotics and the founder of Kinisi Robotics, a mobile manipulator startup acquired by Bear in June 2026. Pierce returned to Bear as Chief Robotics Officer following the acquisition. He holds a PhD in humanoid robotics from the Technical University of Munich, where he developed a full-sized compliant humanoid robot named Herbert. Pierce has nearly two decades of experience in robotics spanning academic research, startup founding, and commercial deployment.
Career
Pierce earned a computer science degree from the University of Exeter, followed by a Master’s degree at the Bristol Robotics Lab. He then pursued a PhD in low-cost humanoid robotics at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), where he worked under Professor Gordon Cheng. During his doctoral research, Pierce designed the mechanical hardware for Herbert, a full-size humanoid robot capable of dynamic work in human environments. He published over ten scientific papers and regularly attended global robotics conferences as a researcher and speaker. Before his PhD work at TUM, Pierce worked on a humanoid robotics project at Samsung in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University.
After spending roughly ten years in academic robotics, Pierce co-founded Bear Robotics in 2017 alongside John Ha, Fangwei Li, and Juan Higueros. In the early days of the company, Pierce played a hands-on role in developing the robotics software and hardware for Bear’s first-generation service robots. He focused particularly on hardware, embedded systems, and close collaboration with the internal robotics team to build systems based on ROS (Robot Operating System). As Bear grew, Pierce transitioned into a managerial role with team and project lead responsibilities.
Pierce left Bear Robotics around 2021-2023 to pursue robotics consulting and eventually founded Kinisi Robotics in late 2023. His motivation for starting Kinisi stemmed from observing that navigation, control, and computer vision in robotics had matured significantly, creating an opportunity to build practical mobile manipulators for warehouse and logistics applications. Pierce stated he believed the future belonged to “practical, task-optimized robots rather than overpromised humanoids.”
Kinisi developed the KR1, a wheeled mobile manipulator designed to automate warehouse tasks like picking, palletizing, and labeling. Pierce emphasized a customer-first approach, stating, “Don’t start with a whiteboard, talk to customers” and “We don’t design for the hypothetical. We design to solve real world problems.” Kinisi Robotics employed approximately 30 people and operated with offices in the United Kingdom, France, and Italy.
In June 2026, Bear Robotics announced a definitive agreement to acquire Kinisi Robotics, bringing Pierce and his engineering team back into Bear. The acquisition added advanced manipulation intelligence—the ability to pick, sort, and handle objects—to Bear’s existing navigation-focused fleet of over 16,000 deployed robots. Pierce returned to Bear as Chief Robotics Officer, reuniting with his original co-founders to integrate manipulation capabilities across Bear’s service and industrial robotics platform.
Source Notes
This profile draws from Brennand Pierce’s LinkedIn profile, his interview with The Robot Report, and the 22Astronauts podcast episode featuring Pierce. Educational background and academic research at TUM and Bristol Robotics Lab are documented on LinkedIn and in The Robot Report interview. Pierce’s role at Bear Robotics and the timeline of his departure and return are sourced from LinkedIn and public announcements regarding the Kinisi acquisition in June 2026.