By 1990, Jacobsen had expanded the company's attention to include commercial interests in areas as diverse as theme-park robots, animatronic film props, actuated prostheses, personal drug-delivery systems, various miniaturized technologies, and steerable catheters.
Sarcos's work was found in a wide variety of applications, including entertainment animatronics such as the life-sized robotic dinosaurs of Jurassic Park: The Ride of Universal Studios Hollywood,[1] robotic displays (e.g., the fountains of Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, NV), NASA space-suit-testing equipment, motorized prosthetic limbs, and even MEMS actuators and sensors.
In 2001, Sarcos was awarded a multi-phase research grant from DARPA of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to design a powered exoskeleton suitable for military applications.
At the time of the purchase by Raytheon, the exoskeleton designed under the DARPA grant had been slated to begin production as early as 2008 for the United States Army.
[12] Starting in 2016, a number of companies and institutional investors began participating in a series of investment rounds with the goal of providing Sarcos with the necessary capital for commercializing a suite of robotic exoskeletons and manipulators, all to be marketed under the product-line name "Guardian.
[20] Almost from the onset of its listing on Nasdaq, Sarcos consistently underperformed as a public company, failing to secure the cash flow needed to operate successfully as a business of 280 employees.
[21][22] Facing delisting in June 2023, Sarcos issued a 1:6 reverse stock split to increase its share price in accordance with Nasdaq's $1.00 minimum-bid-price rule.