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The Drone Center’s Weekly Roundup: 6/24/17
June 19, 2017 – June 25, 2017
At the Center for the Study of the Drone
In an interview with Robotics Tomorrow, Center for the Study of the Drone Co-Director Arthur Holland Michel discusses t...
Cargo drones deliver in the Amazon rainforest
Patrick Meier
16 Feb 2017
The Amazon is home to thousands of local indigenous communities spread across very remote areas. As a result, these sparsely populated communities rarely have reliable access to essential medicines an...
While Amazon doubles its number of warehouse robots to 30K, competing systems emerge
Frank Tobe
02 Nov 2015
Amazon announced that at the end of September they had 30,000 Kiva robots at work in 13 fulfillment centers, effectively doubling the number of Kiva bots that it had in 2014. "Our intent is to use...
GreyOrange gets $30m for mobile robots
Frank Tobe
14 Aug 2015
GreyOrange, an India and Singapore-based materials handling startup, has received $30m in equity funding to ramp up production of their Butler shelves-to-picker robot system....
Team RBO from Berlin wins Amazon Picking Challenge convincingly
Andra Keay
29 May 2015
The Amazon Picking Challenge is over and two things stood out. One: how many different arm gripper solutions were possible; and two: just how difficult the challenge still is. The gap between the top...
Competing robotic warehouse systems
Frank Tobe
01 May 2015
As sales via online retailers steadily increase, so too does the speed with which customers want their goods delivered. Amazon, eBay, and Google all have massive and speedy warehousing operations atte...
Amazon Prime Air gets an updated FAA exemption
Frank Tobe
13 Apr 2015
In a 9-page legal letter, with 28 itemized conditions and limitations, the FAA issued an exemption to Amazon to enable Prime Air to test in US airspace....
As drone use flourishes, the FAA waivers, and Amazon is forced offshore
Frank Tobe
31 Mar 2015
Funding continues to flow to drone ventures worldwide even as news from the FAA suggests it will be many years before true autonomous flight will be allowed in the US. Meanwhile Amazon feels they mus...
Amazon tests delivery drones at secret Canada site after US frustration
Hallie Siegel
30 Mar 2015
Exclusive: Guardian gains access to unnamed British Columbia site where tech giant’s roboticists and engineers are developing their unmanned delivery serviceSee it on Scoop.it, via Robotics...
Christmas is orange at Amazon
Frank Tobe
02 Dec 2014
15K+ bright orange Kiva robots are operating across the US and at 10 Amazon fulfillment distribution centers this holiday season....
Amazon’s Echo: A point-of-sale even the kids can relate to
Mark Stephen Meadows
14 Nov 2014
Amazon, the largest online retailer and Internet company in the USA, sells media, data, software, video games, electronics, food, toys, clothes, furniture, and jewelry. It is a big provider of cloud c...
Amazon Picking Challenge
Joe Romano
05 Nov 2014
In September 2014 Amazon announced the Amazon Picking Challenge, a new robot manipulation contest as part of the ICRA robot challenges. The idea was to take a difficult problem from the warehouse orde...
Does the Small UAV industry need its own coalition?
Hallie Siegel
22 Aug 2014
Last week USA Today reported that Amazon, 3D Robotics, Parrot and DJI had banded together to form a "Small UAV Coalition", hiring DC-based lobbying firm Akin Gump to represent their interests...
Amazon requests FAA permission to test delivery drones
Dronologista
14 Jul 2014
In April this year, Amazon.com issued a shareholder letter that stated: “The Prime Air team is already flight testing our 5th and 6th generation aerial vehicles…″ Fast forward three months to t...
Amazon seeks FAA permission to test drones outdoors near Seattle
Andra Keay
13 Jul 2014
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is seeking permission from U.S. regulators to test its delivery drones near Seattle, as part of a rapid expansion of a program that has sparked widespread deba...
Amazon will be using 10,000 robots in its warehouses by the end of the year | CNN
Hallie Siegel
28 May 2014
CEO Jeff Bezos told investors at a shareholder meeting Wednesday that he expects to significantly increase the number of robots used to fulfill customer orders. There are currently about 1,000 robot w...
MODEX: How quickly things change
Frank Tobe
18 Mar 2014
At previous MODEX events - trade shows exhibiting the latest manufacturing and supply chain equipment and technologies - Kiva had their own boothes. Big boothes with lots of people marveling at their...
Commercial drone use legal in USA? Who’s willing to make bail?
Andra Keay
07 Mar 2014
Or perhaps the better question is: who's willing to be the test case?
A US federal court judge ruled against the FAA yesterday in their case against Raphael Pirker (the first and only person fine...
Brand strength, cultural influence of consumer-facing giants like Google, Apple and Amazon help legitimize robotics for businesses and investors
Dan Kara
04 Mar 2014
What is one to make of this focus series … Big Deals: What It Means to Have the Giants Investing in Robotics … with the giants being Google, Amazon and Apple (as given in the preamble)? The ass...
Valery Komissarova on when investing in robots is the right move
Valery Komissarova and Andra Keay
26 Feb 2014
As part of Robohub’s Big Deals series, startup expert Andra Keay asks Valery Komissarova, Grishin Robotics’ Director of Business Development, about what all the recent robotics acquisitions mean t...
The robots behind your Internet shopping addiction: How your wallet is driving retail automation
Erin Rapacki
25 Feb 2014
When you're shopping for the best online deals you're probably not thinking much about the massive distribution network required to bring that pair of shoes to your doorstep. Is your quest for the bes...
Will companies like Google and Amazon usher in a new era for robotics?
Chad Partridge
18 Feb 2014
Amazon announced its plans to launch a new drone delivery service this past December.
Recent eye-popping acquisitions of robotics technology companies by giants like Google and Amazon might sugge...
Big deals: What it means to have the giants investing in robotics
Hallie Siegel
12 Feb 2014
If the world outside the robotics community didn't know about Boston Dynamics, Kiva and Nest, they do now. Recent robotics acquisitions and investments by major-league players like Google, Apple a...
Alan Winfield on “What does it mean to have giants like Google, Apple and Amazon investing in robotics?”
Alan Winfield
12 Feb 2014
Judging by the levels of media coverage and frenzied speculation that has followed each acquisition, the short answer to what does it mean is: endless press exposure. I almost wrote 'priceless exp...
Mark Stephen Meadows on “What does it mean to have giants like Google, Apple and Amazon investing in robotics?”
Mark Stephen Meadows
12 Feb 2014
Google, is the wild card for me. With more acquisitions (DeepMind, Boston Dynamics, Redwood Robotics, Industrial Perception, Meka, Schaft, and others) than Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microso...
What do Google, Amazon, IBM, Apple, Microsoft and all the airlines and car companies want?
Frank Tobe
03 Feb 2014
They want to communicate more accurately, resolve issues faster and with higher levels of satisfaction than at present. They also want to enable more complex communication. And they want to do it amia...
Apple, Amazon and now Google: It’s a pretty exciting day for robotics!
Frank Tobe
14 Dec 2013
There is serious momentum in robotics these days, evidenced by recent news from Apple, Amazon and Google:
Apple announced that they were investing $10.5 billion in supply chain robots and automati...
Forget the octocopter, let’s talk about Kiva
Shawn Milne and Michael Carroll
10 Dec 2013
Given all the chatter on drones and automation, we thought it would be a good time to dive deeper into the Kiva opportunity and potential impact on leverage/margins. For the sake of our analysis, we t...
Drones on and on and on | The Boston Globe
Hallie Siegel
10 Dec 2013
US needs to join the aviation revolution
Last week’s announcement that Amazon is testing the delivery of packages with small drones has created a media storm, and seems to have taken most people by...
Amid drone talk, Amazon has real robots | Wall Street Journal Blog
Hallie Siegel
09 Dec 2013
Amazon got a lot of ink for its sci-fi drone delivery idea this week, but a more real and immediate robot effort underway in the Seattle retailer’s warehouses could save it as much as $916 million a...
Jeff Bezos reaches for tip of UAS iceberg
Frank Tobe
05 Dec 2013
On Sunday, Charlie Rose from CBS News 60 Minutes, interviewed Jeff Bezos about what is next for Amazon, the world's largest online retailer with more than 225 million customers.
Volume can reach 30...
Amazon Prime Air: 5 Predictions About the Retailer’s Delivery Drones | TIME
Hallie Siegel
02 Dec 2013
Assuming Amazon Prime Air eventually launches … there are a handful of predictions about the system itself and delivery-by-drone systems in general…
Read more by Doug Aamoth on TIME.com...
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos looks to the future | 60 Minutes
Hallie Siegel
02 Dec 2013
There has never been a company quite like Amazon. Conceived as an online book seller, Amazon has reinvented itself time and again, changing the way the world shops, reads and computes. Amazon has 225 ...
Amazon Promises Package Delivery By Drone: Is It for Real? | Automaton
Hallie Siegel
02 Dec 2013
Once you get past the wow factor [of Amazon's drone delivery announcement] and start thinking critically about what it would take to make something like this work in practice, it starts to look a lot...
Amazon announces plans for drone delivery service, says safety will be key priority
Hallie Siegel
02 Dec 2013
Amazon announced yesterday that it is developing a drone delivery service called Prime Air that will aim to get packages into customer's hands within 30 minutes. They are planning to launch as soon a...
Amazon Reveals It Wants To Deploy Delivery Drones | Huff Post
Andra Keay
02 Dec 2013
Amazon offering delivery on Sunday was only the beginning.The Robot Launch Pad's insight:It's no surprise that Amazon wants drone delivery to solve the last mile problem. And probably an underwhelming...
