The energy infrastructure of the United States is aging. Since the beginning of the 1900’s and Edison’s light bulb delivering reliable power has been a major industry. One researcher estimated the economic impact of Edison’s inventions had a current value of $19 billion. The power utility industry generates power and delivers it for hundreds of […]
Tibion Bionic Leg Wins IERA Award
The Tibion Bionic Leg won the 2013 IERA (Invention and Entrepreneurship Award in Robotics and Automation) Prize at the recent ICRA Conference in Karlsruhe, Germany. The device is not a prosthesis (artificial limb), or a device a patient wears indefinitely. It is a robotic aid worn during therapy sessions over weeks or months, until the…
Jury finds Intuitive Surgical’s training practices NOT at fault
Jurors reached a 10-2 verdict after a 5-week trial. Intuitive Surgical owes no damages based on claims by the family that Intuitive had inadequately trained the doctor who performed the operation. The win may reduce the steam in the kettle of the pending class action suits about false claims by the company regarding their financial…
Coming soon to protect texters (like you?)
CrashAlert is an app under development by Pourang Irani and Juan David Hincapié-Ramos at the University of Manitoba to provide a realistic solution to the ongoing dangers posed by walking and texting. Since users aren’t likely to pocket their devices, the system restores their peripheral vision through the use of a Kinect-like forward-looking depth camera…
SWIVL finds it’s niche
IndieGoGo-funded swiveling personal camera and follow-me device has sold 10,000 units thus far; 1,250 to schools and universities. Now they are scaling up with upgraded capabilities and a new round of funding including $500,000 from Grishin Robotics. New SWIVL can handle iPads and tablets, cloud services and SDKs from Apple and Android. Educators and business…
Kinect completely redone. Windfall for robotics.
The new Kinect, released a few days ago, uses an infrared light to illuminate whatever is in front of the sensor, and the pixels of an infrared camera watch for each pulse to reflect back. Just like radar, distance is calculated by the time it takes for light to reach a particular pixel and reflect…
Are Accelerators the new Incubators and Angel Investors?
Tech startups can lead to big business. Last year Y Combinator reported their top 21 projects were worth $4.7 billion! Just last week Airware, a Y Combinator startup, received the biggest round of funding in YC history ($10.7 million). Y Combinator is certainly the most well known and the most visual leader in the new…
Is the commercialization of UASs passing the U.S. by?
Forget the debate about the military use of drones (but if you must know, here’s a comprehensive FAQ and a United Nations Report on the issue). There’s money to be made using those very same unmanned aerial vehicles and systems for commercial purposes. And money is being made by UAS makers and the ancillary businesses…
Jobless Recovery?
A lot of commentary about jobless recovery recently. It brings to mind many comments from politicians campaging for election. They are going to bring jobs back to America. I don’t think so. Job creation is not a political act. Politicians create nothing, except maybe more red tape or hiring more people to process more red […]
Rethink Robotics’ Baxter and Universal Robots UR5 and UR10 Succeeding
By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report Low-cost robots are marching into Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Much has been said about the need to augment the skills and increase the productivity of small factory workers by using robotic assistants called co-robots. Europe funded an SME (Small and Medium-sized Enterprise) public-private consortium to…
This Week’s Military News:
The Northrop Grumman X-47B unmanned aircraft made its first aircraft carrier launch this week. Two days later they spent the whole day doing touch-and-go take-offs and landings. The US Navy’s Naval Research Lab (NRL) flew a UAV for 48 hours, breaking a fuel-cell-for-flight record. The UAV was powered by a liquid hydrogen fuel in a…
Rethink Robotics’ Baxter and Universal Robots Succeeding
Almost all industrial robot makers have or are working on lightweight and human-friendly robot arms, but none are offering them at low cost, or with user-friendly training, or plug and play and safety features. There are other robot startups in the SME marketplace – and on the horizon – but none are as far along…
Airware Gets $10.7M from Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures to Build Autopilot Systems for UASs
Airware, a Newport Beach, CA start-up offering autopilots for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) enabling UAS manufacturers to rapidly develop diverse and price competitive solutions while maintaining their intellectual property. Airware made it into Y Combinator’s Winter 2013 class. The company’s $10.4M Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures is the biggest post-Demo Day…
Othermill: a new high quality CNC circuit board fabricator
Otherfab, a spin-off from San Francisco-based Otherlab, an engineering, energy, education, math, computation and design research facility, surpassed their Kickstarter goal and is well on their way to produce their new CNC device. Originally developed to revive shop class in American schools by providing a very capable CNC fabricating machine but stalled by government funding…
ROS Industrial celebrates one-year anniversary
ROS-I is developing and promoting a manufacturer-independent open-source library of drivers and the transfer of established components from research to industry – not just h/w interfaces and MS, IOS and Android support, but legal and standardization issues as well. Interchangeability of h/w components through standardized interfaces and intelligent software components for flexible production are the…
Starting and Stopping – Part 2
It seems trite to say that Newton’s basic laws of motion still haven’t changed. A body in motion tends to stay in motion, except when it hits something else or slows down and coasts to a stop. Let’s take these two options separately. In last week’s post I mentioned the large diameter fan in a […]
All Eyes on Intuitive Surgical Suit
UPDATED 5-21-2013: Lawyers conclude closing arguments and case given to jurors For continuing coverage of not only the court case but also the FDA probe, the JAMA article, the product recall, and the new class action suits, click here. UPDATED 4-19-2013 Intuitive Surgical's marketing director testified that they focused on a category of urologists…
13 robotic innovations among 2013 Edison Award winners
The Edison Awards, created by the American Marketing Association in 1987 but now a self-sustaining non-profit, jury-selects and annually awards for innovation and innovators in technology. 2013’s winners include 13 robotic companies and 4 more that came from the fields of automation or sensing. Rethink Robotics’ Baxter, iRobot’s Looj and Liquid Robotics’ Wave Glider all…
KUKA acquires US integrator and toolmaker
For an amount “in the low double digit million Euro range,” KUKA has acquired the engineering services, toolmaking and integration divisions of US-based Utica Enterprises. 300 people are involved in the acquisition. “With this acquisition KUKA Systems is leveraging its technologies. Our customers will benefit from an expanded manufacturing footprint, talent pool and knowledge base…
Favorable jury verdict may offset flurry of bad publicity for Intuitive Surgical
By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report UPDATED: 5-24-13 Jury finds Intuitive NOT GUILTY. Scroll to end to see details. One of robotics’ biggest stars, Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ:ISRG), and their da Vinci robotic surgical systems, is receiving a lot of unfavorable media attention – including a 4-part “exposé” by MSNBC – because: A…
Starting and Stopping
Cars guys will sometimes say that the worst thing you can do is start your car. This is because after sitting still for any length of time, at the instant you turn the key, there is no lubrication in the engine. In the combustion engine the starter motor is turning the engine with electricity prior […]
A conversation with Henri Seydoux
Armed with $40 million for acquisitions, Parrot S.A. founder, Chairman and CEO Henri Seydoux said that the success of the AR.Drone and AR.Drone 2 proves that there is a large consumer market for the entertainment side of aerial drones. Now he and Parrot are going after the professional side: providing mapping and geographical information for…