Characterized joint modules, a 1 kHz motion domain controller, and the measurements that put both inside your simulator. You keep the model. Nora owns everything below the joint-level contract.
The stack has split into brains and bodies. The brain companies run on other people's hardware, and their options are whole robots they re-characterize by hand, or bare components with no firmware, no measurements and no safety chain.
Autos solved this decades ago with the Tier-1: a supplier who designs the deterministic hardware under the software stack, stands behind it, and never touches the stack. Nora is that Tier-1 for the motion domain of robots.
Motor, reducer, encoder and drive with Nora firmware: FOC and torque loops, safe torque off in the drive, a per-unit conformance record that ships with every module. Shenzhen and Suzhou supply, U.S. counterparty.
1 kHz executor with verified timing bounds, EtherCAT master, IMU and F/T with hardware timestamps, and an independent safety MCU carrying the functions a learned policy cannot.
Per-joint dynamics measured on a rig, exported as Isaac Lab / MuJoCo assets validated against real trajectories. Deployed fleets re-identify themselves and flag drift.
You train the policy and want a body that stays in-distribution across units and revisions without a firmware team.
You started on arms and are adding wheels or legs. Locomotion arrives as a delivered capability under your policy.
Asian sourcing with a U.S. entity and a path to U.S. integration, for deployments on both sides of the FCC line.