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Regulations on civilian drones in the US and Europe, what do they involve?
Silvio Hänsenberger and Isabelle Wildhaber
31 Aug 2016
With new markets on the horizon, regulations governing civilian drones are currently being adapted in Europe and the US. What will these new regulations entail? And how well will they protect people a...
Two LiDAR makers each get big funding
Frank Tobe
26 Aug 2016
In anticipation of the need for LiDAR devices in cars with assisted steering and other self-driving technologies, both Velodyne and Quanergy received funding. Quanergy raised $90 million and Velodyne...
The Robot Economy: Interview with Alan Winfield
SPARC
24 Aug 2016
Robots and their impact on the economy is on the forefront of everyone’s mind. Will robots increase productivity and jobs, improve society, and will wealth be shared? To address this question, we’...
Robocar recap: Uber buys Otto, folks leave Google, Ford goes big, Tesla drops MobilEye
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
23 Aug 2016
Brad Templeton, from Robocars.com, discusses the latest robocar related news....
News bureaus and networks setting up drone divisions
Frank Tobe
22 Aug 2016
CNN just inaugurated their new drone division. So have many other news organizations. Network providers are also setting up drone operations for a variety of purposes....
As Ford sets a date, Jibo retracts theirs
Frank Tobe
19 Aug 2016
Bringing a complex new product to market is an intensive process fraught with problems. Getting hardware ready for manufacturing is often the easy part; it's the software and regulatory compliance tha...
Midea’s masterplan to become China’s robot powerhouse
Frank Tobe
18 Aug 2016
Chinese consumer manufacturer Midea, after having spent over $4 billion to acquire 94% of German robot maker Kuka, is planning to spend an additional $1.5 billion to turn itself into China's preemin...
50 different state regulations for robocars is not a bad idea
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
18 Aug 2016
At the recent AUVSI/TRB conference in San Francisco, there was talk of upcoming regulation, particularly from NHTSA. Secretary of Transportation Foxx and his NHTSA staff spoke with just vague hints ab...
IDC awards 5 warehouse robotics innovators
Frank Tobe
17 Aug 2016
International Data Corporation (IDC) has awarded five pioneering players in the warehouse robotics market with the 2016 IDC Innovators Award. Companies selected met the following criteria: revenue of...
Will robocars be heaven or hell for our cities?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
15 Aug 2016
Robin Chase wrote an article wondering if robocars will improve or ruin our cities and asked for my comment on it. It’s a long article, and I have lots of comment, since I have been considering thes...
Survey: Evaluate ethics of health related privacy with care robots
Dieter Vanderelst and Jurgen Willems
12 Aug 2016
Future Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) should be safe, but patients also have a right to privacy, liberty and social contact. The survey investigates, in a hypothetical scenario, how Annie's SAR s...
Robocar platooning, or just carpool?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
12 Aug 2016
At the recent AUVSI/TRB symposium, a popular research topic was platooning for robocars and trucks. Platooning is perhaps the oldest practical proposal when it comes to car automation because you can ...
What happens when a robot company sells off a division?
Frank Tobe
11 Aug 2016
Spin-offs are disrupting, but often necessary. Here are two recent examples: iRobot sold off its Defense & Security Business Unit to a private equity firm, and Harvest Automation sold the IP an...
The dark side of ethical robots
Alan Winfield
09 Aug 2016
When I was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4's Today programme in 2014, Justin Webb's final question was, "If you can make an ethical robot, doesn't that mean you could make an unethical robot?" The ans...
As Intuitive Surgical continues to shine, competitors are entering the fray
Frank Tobe
05 Aug 2016
Robotic surgery has long been dominated by Intuitive Surgical which has placed more than 3,600 of its da Vinci machines in hospitals around the world. Nevertheless, an increasing number of new player...
July fundings, acquisitions and failures
Frank Tobe
03 Aug 2016
Despite all the high-profile billion-dollar acquisitions, eg: ARM by SoftBank, KUKA by Midea and Uber China by Didi Chuxing, M&A are down 19% this year, according to both Forbes and CB Insights. B...
Singapore to begin testing on-demand robot taxis
Frank Tobe
02 Aug 2016
Delphi Automotive, the global provider of vehicle electronics components, will begin testing 6 phone-dispatched autonomous taxis in Singapore that will go point-to-point based on customer requests w...
Lessons from Brexit and learning to better communicate robotics research and innovation
Michael Szollosy
27 Jul 2016
As part of the UK’s National Robotics Week, The University of Sheffield hosted the 17th Towards Autonomous Systems (TAROS) conference from 28-30 June. Among the papers and discussions on the develo...
Tesla’s Master Plan, Part Deux: Some expected, some strange
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
26 Jul 2016
Today, I want to look at some implications of Tesla’s Master Plan, Part Deux which caused some buzz this week. There was other news, of course, including the AUVSI/TRB meeting which I attended, and ...
AUTOMATICA 2016: Digitalization, collaboration and service robotics
Frank Tobe
26 Jul 2016
AUTOMATICA 2016, held in June in Munich at the massive Messe tradefair facility, is a gigantic show focused on automation, mechatronics, robotics and emerging technologies as they relate to the in...
How science can help us make AI more trustworthy
Simone Stumpf
22 Jul 2016
Stories about racist Twitter accounts and crashing self-driving cars can make us think that artificial intelligence (AI) is a work in progress. But while these headline-grabbing mistakes reveal the fr...
Midea now owns 85.69% of KUKA’s shares
Frank Tobe
21 Jul 2016
Since the announcement of the month-long tender offer by Midea to buy 49% of the shares of German robot maker KUKA AG - and private negotiations - Midea now has 85.69% of the shares....
SoftBank jumpstarts IoT by buying ARM for $32 billion
Frank Tobe
19 Jul 2016
The announcement that SoftBank will spend $32 billion to acquire ARM Holdings means the Japanese firm is buying the most important company in the world of mobile processors for smartphone and Intern...
Robots for a sustainable future
Jibo
15 Jul 2016
Climate change is one of the greatest issues facing the world today. With temperatures rising to their highest point in 4,000 years due to human activity and monthly average carbon dioxide levels exce...
Carpool apps are on the rise, let’s make transfer points and roads to help
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
15 Jul 2016
The cell phone ride hail apps like Uber and Lyft are now reporting great success with actual ride-sharing, under the names UberPool, LyftLines and Lyft Carpool. In addition, a whole new raft of apps t...
“Deep learning is the most fundamental advance in AI research since AI started in 1956”
Frank Tobe
14 Jul 2016
Frank Chen, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital and private equity firm, said, "It is absolutely non-controversial that deep learning is the most fundamental advance ...
Relax, we’re not living in a computer simulation
Alan Winfield
13 Jul 2016
Ever since Elon Musk's recent admission that he's a simulationist, several people have asked me what I think of the proposition that we are living inside a simulation. My view is very firmly that the...
Coming very soon: robotic toys, robot-made hamburgers, mobile robot deliveries
Frank Tobe
12 Jul 2016
Re-joining the ranks, Sony announced a return to robotics. Momentum is opening a robot hamburger shop. And Starship is beginning to deliver food to three cities in Europe....
Understanding the massive gulf between the Tesla Autopilot and a real robocar, in light of the crash
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
11 Jul 2016
Brad Templeton describes Tesla’s Autopilot as a 'distant cousin of a real robocar' that primarily uses a MobilEye EyeQ3 camera combined with radars and ultrasonic sensors. Unlike robocar sensors, T...
62 market research reports study robotics industry
Frank Tobe
11 Jul 2016
The number of research reports studying the robotics industry is growing exponentially. To date in 2016 there have been 109 on subjects ranging from overly broad to very drilled-down views of the in...
Starship delivery robots getting ready to deliver in London, Germany, Bern
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
07 Jul 2016
At Starship, we announced our first pilot projects for robotic delivery which will begin operating this summer. We’ll be working with a London food delivery startup Pronto as well as German parcel c...
Should Tesla disable your Autopilot if you’re not diligent? Plus, a survey of robocar validation
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
06 Jul 2016
In this article, Brad Templeton provides a rundown of different approaches for validation of self-driving and driver assist systems, a recommendation to Tesla and others to have countermeasures to det...
Logistic companies Swisslog, Dematic, Egemin and Intelligrated all acquired
Frank Tobe
05 Jul 2016
First, the KION Group acquires Dematic for $2.5 billion. A week later, Honeywell acquires Intelligrated for $1.5 billion. KION acquires Retrotech and earlier still Egemin, while Kuka acquires Swisslog...
Man dies while driven by Tesla Autopilot
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
30 Jun 2016
A Tesla blog post describes the first fatality involving a self drive system. A Tesla was driving on autopilot down a divided highway. For unknown reasons, a truck crossed the highway (something m...
June fundings, acquisitions and failures
Frank Tobe
30 Jun 2016
Six months worth of funding deals thus far in 2016 indicate that investments in robotics - equity fundings, and acquisitions - are accelerating, particularly in big deals involving Chinese money....
What’s happening in robotics? Five trends to watch
Frank Tobe
29 Jun 2016
Industrial robots used to be dumb, somewhat inflexible, and mostly blind - but also fast, precise and very efficient. As the cost of components, sensors and vision systems has been dro...
