Each year the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) surveys and tabulates data from its worldwide network of robotics associations. The two 2016 annual World Robotics Industrial Robots and World Robotics Service Robots reports represent the IFR's analysis of 2015 results. World Robotics Industrial Robots By the end of 2019 there will be around 2.6 million industrial…
Sports Robots Coming to Practice Fields Near You
The Mobile Virtual Player (MVP) robot has garnered attention for its ability to help reduce football-related concussions. But the robot has proved beneficial for many other sports, too.
“AI is on the verge of changing everything” said Charlie Rose on CBS 60 Minutes
In a quest to understand why and where all the billions of dollars are being spent on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Charlie Rose and the CBS 60 Minutes team took us on a journey to a cancer hospital in North Carolina, Austin, Texas, and the Carnegie Mellon University robotics lab in Pittsburgh. Governments, companies and universities are investing billions and…
Self-Driving Bicycle Hopes to Change Public Transit
The University of Washington Bothell is building a self-driving bicycle that can travel 30 MPH with a 15-mile range. The team claims the self-driving bicycle “could get riders from A to B faster than a self-driving car, and at a tenth of the cost.”
RoboValley Gets Ready to Host RoboBusiness Europe 2017
Get a sneak peek at the events around and major topics to be discussed at RoboBusiness Europe 2017, which will be held at TU Delft in the Netherlands’ RoboValley.
Zymergen gets $130 million from SoftBank and other VCs
SoftBank, the Japanese telecom conglomerate, led a group that included Iconiq Capital, Prelude Ventures, Tao Capital Partners, and seven others in a $130 million funding round for Zymergen to help the company grow its workforce and scale its operations in Silicon Valley. Zymergen is a startup with a focus on biology, analytics and robots. The company is attempting to…
Watch: 60 Minutes Report on AI
60 Minutes reports on the advancement of artificial intelligence, how it’s changing the world, and how its made more progress in the past five years than in the previous 50.
Manufacturing lines are getting a little Blurry
3D printing is making a big splash in the market. There have been a number of variants of the technology that are driving very complex changes into the manufacturing landscape, and it’s making the lines of demarcation a little blurry. That’s intentional since the key value of printed parts is reducing the cost threshold to […]
Canvas Technology Building Indoor Autonomy
Canvas Technology, a company that’s been working in stealth mode, is already demonstrating automotive-level autonomous driving and goods delivery – indoors.
Drone Data Plans Coming from Verizon
Verizon’s drone data plans will cost $25 a month for 1GB and $80 a month for 10GB. Verizon also wants to use drones to strengthen its network coverage.
Samsung acquires Viv — it’s a long story
Dag Kittlaus was the founder and CEO of Siri, Inc. which produced an app that went into the Apple App Store in February 2010. The app quickly rose to 1st place in the Lifestyle section of the app store. In March, 2010, Steve Jobs called Kittlaus and started the dialogue that ended when Apple acquired Siri…
Clearpath Raises $30M for Autonomous Material Handling Unit
Clearpath Robotics has raised $30 million to expand its OTTO Motors division for autonomous material handling. CEO Matt Rendall answered our questions about logistics, self-driving cars, and jobs.
Robot Dog Wants to Comfort Lonely Seniors
Hasbro’s new Companion Pet Golden Pup is a golden retriever robot dog that hopes to be your grandparent’s new best friend. At $120, your lonely loved ones interact with the Companion Pet Golden Pup by talking to it, which causes the robot dog to look at you and make “puppy-like noises.”
Collaborative Robot Market Strategy Is the Focus of Universal Robots’ New President
The collaborative robot market is growing, but estimates of how much vary widely. Jurgen von Hollen, the new president of Universal Robots, wants to educate end users on where they can gain efficiency.
Lambda Research Corp. announces official release date of TracePro Version 7.8
Lambda Research Corp., designer and publisher of illumination and optical design software, announces the official release date of its flagship TracePro software. The latest release, TracePro v7.8, will be available to download starting, September 30, 2016. Updated features in TracePro v7.8 include the latest version of the Lighting Toolkit, new Path Sort Filtering, and new […]
Teradyne Inc. announces new Universal Robots president
Universal Robots A/S (UR) of Teradyne named Jürgen von Hollen President. He succeeds Enrico Krog Iversen who relinquished the post in June 2016. Mr. von Hollen was most recently the Executive President of the Engineering Solutions Division, which includes the Automation and Controls business of Bilfinger SE, in Mannheim, Germany, a leading international Engineering and Services company. […]
September fundings, acquisitions, IPOs and failures
September continued the big-money spree for funding robotic startups. 10 good-sized deals and three little ones. Almost $220 million (bringing the year-to-date total well over $1 billion)! Plus another $2.2 billion paid in September for six acquisitions. Fundings Carbon 3D, a Silicon Valley 3D printer startup, raised $81 million from a group of 6 investors led by BMW Group and Sequoia…
Review of Commercial UAV Show Asia held in Singapore
Alejandro Alonso-Puig, the CTO of Singapore UAS startup Infinium Robotics, visited and spoke at the Commercial UAV Show Asia 2016 held in conjunction with the IoT Show 2016, September 1-2, at the Suntec Convention Centre in Singapore. Puig has given permission to republish his review of the show. The well-known companies in the Commercial UAV market, as expected,…
Shock-Absorbing Skins Protect 3D-Printed Robots
By “programming” customized soft materials, a team of researchers from MIT CSAIL can 3D print more durable robots.
Work is What We Do – Part 2
How we do work has changed dramatically over the last few hundred years. We can arbitrarily refer to the Industrial Revolution using steam power as Industrie 1.0, irrespective of the fact that we should really be talking about Industry 2.0 or 3.0 based on a more appropriate historical context. Even assuming 1.0, Industrie 2.0 would […]
A look at a Danish robotics cluster
There are many robotics clusters around the world successfully providing for the needs of their respective communities and a few not really achieving their desired goals. Odense and the Danish clusters certainly fall into the former category. They do so because they are organized at every level to be offering and have people that are business smart,…
Work is What We Do – Part 1
Work is what we do to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves and our loved ones. Work is that effort required to achieve survival and safety. Throughout human history and even today in some rural areas, work is as basic as finding water and food. The various inventions around doing work, providing water, food and shelter, […]