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Industrial robot sales for 2015 set new record, despite troubles in China
Frank Tobe
22 Jun 2016
Worldwide sales of industrial robots set a new record: 248,000 units sold in 2015, 12% more than 2014. 66,700 units sold in China of which 20,400 were made in China.
Asia is still the strongest gr...
Designing simple, cheap cars of the future
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
17 Jun 2016
What does that car of the future look like? There is no one answer; in this world, the car that is sent to pick you up can be tailored for your trip. The more people traveling, the bigger the car. If ...
Caring for robots: How assistive robotics may change our homes
Benjamin Lipp
15 Jun 2016
Who will care for us in the future? According to many politicians, scientists and market analysts, it could be machines. Machines that will change our diapers, and spend time with us once we are old....
Unmanned combat robots beginning to appear
Frank Tobe
14 Jun 2016
IAI's RoBattle unmanned, heavy duty, highly maneuverable, combat and support robotic system (UGV) is being shown at the Eurosatory 2016 Land and Airland Defence and Security tradeshow in Paris this...
Chinese investors keep buying international robotics companies
Frank Tobe
13 Jun 2016
The latest acquisition is Gimatic, an Italian pneumatic and electric grippers, sensors and positioners maker, by Agic Capital. The Financial Times reported the sale price to be between $112 and $16...
Letting policymakers handle the trolley problem
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
10 Jun 2016
When I give talks on robocars the most common question asked is the one known as the “trolley problem” question. That is: “what will the car do if it has to choose between killing one person or ...
Xiaomi challenges DJI with a low-cost drone
Frank Tobe
09 Jun 2016
Xiaomi, one of China’s star Internet, phone and electronics startups, develops cut-rate but reliable phones and consumer devices and markets them directly to consumers online. Their new HD drone...
How much can customers test robocars?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
07 Jun 2016
Reports from Tesla suggest they are gathering massive amounts of driving data from logs in their cars — 780 million miles of driving, and as much as 100 million miles in autopilot mode. This contras...
Big data, the cloud — FANUC and Kuka?
Frank Tobe
07 Jun 2016
FANUC, the world’s largest maker of industrial robots, plans to start connecting 400,000 of their installed systems by the end of this year. The goal is to collect data about their operations and...
U of Washington Tech Policy Lab answers the question: What is a robot?
Frank Tobe
06 Jun 2016
What is a robot? There are business, legal, insurance and safety considerations which make that definition important and the Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington gave it a try with an inter...
What is a CRO and will your business soon need one?
Jeffrey Walker
02 Jun 2016
The times are changing! What seemed like science fiction a few years ago is now on the front page of the news. Augmented reality, wearables, virtual assistants, robots, and other smart devices are beg...
An alternative to specific regulations for robocars: A liability doubling
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
02 Jun 2016
Can our emotional fear of machines, and the call for premature regulation, be mollified by a temporary increase in liability which takes the place of specific regulations to keep people safe?
So fa...
May fundings, acquisitions and IPOs
Frank Tobe
01 Jun 2016
UPDATE: June 1, 2016: Forbes wrote today that Toyota is in discussions with Google not only for Boston Dynamics but also for Schaft, the Japanese startup that won the DARPA Robotics Challenge — a...
Robocar news around the globe: Tesla crash, Declaration of Amsterdam, and automaker services
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
01 Jun 2016
We have the first report of a real Tesla autopilot crash. To be fair to Tesla, their owner warnings specify very clearly that the autopilot could crash in just this situation. In the video, there is ...
How is Pepper, SoftBank’s emotional robot, doing?
Frank Tobe
30 May 2016
Pepper is a child-height human-shaped robot described as having been designed to be a genuine companion that perceives and acts upon a range of human emotions.
SoftBank, the Japanese telecom gia...
EU’s Horizon 2020 has funded $179 million in robotics PPPs
Frank Tobe
25 May 2016
Over the past two years, research in 5G and robotics PPP projects have received the highest funding awards within Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation program....
Chinese Midea makes $2.5 billion bid for up to 49% of KUKA
Frank Tobe
19 May 2016
In China’s relentless state-stimulated quest to grow their robotics industry, Midea Group, a Chinese appliance manufacturer which already owns 13.5% of KUKA’s shares, has offered to buy up to 49...
Self-driving trucks are coming — what will that mean?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
18 May 2016
Today sees the un-stealthing of a new company called Otto which plans to build self-driving systems for long haul trucks. The company has been formed by a skilled team, including former members of Goo...
Paradigm shift: from Siri to Viv
Frank Tobe
12 May 2016
Artificial intelligence that programs itself on the fly - from the team that developed Siri at SRI and Apple - was demonstrated this week in New York and it quickly performed complex spoken tasks, liv...
The coming nightmare for the car industry
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
11 May 2016
I have often written on the challenge facing existing automakers in the world of robocars. They need to learn to completely switch their way of thinking in a world of mobility on demand, and not all o...
April fundings, acquisitions and IPOs
Frank Tobe
02 May 2016
April was a big month for investing in robotics - 19 companies were funded to the tune of $175 million vs. $15.8M in January, $18.6M in February, and $45.4M in March. Four companies were acquired with...
Where’s Susi? Airborne orangutan tracking with python and react.js
Dirk Gorissen
27 Apr 2016
You are faced with a few thousand hectares of rainforest that you know harbours one or more orangutans that you need to track down. Where, how, and why do you start looking?...
Stakeholders likely to be disrupted by the changeover to self-driving vehicles
Frank Tobe
26 Apr 2016
Volumes have been written about the possible beneficial (and negative) effects of self-driving cars and systems. But few have studied what industries will be disrupted by the transformations as self-d...
Global and iRobot floor cleaning market
Frank Tobe
25 Apr 2016
iRobot recently divested its defense division so that it could focus on consumer and mobility products. Red Mountain Capital, a hedge fund that owns ~6% of iRobot stock wants to place two pe...
China’s growing robot industry turns to acquisitions
Frank Tobe
25 Apr 2016
Paslin, a Michigan integrator of welding robots, automation systems, and tooling, was acquired by Wanfeng Technology Group for an undisclosed amount (but reported as $302 million i...
How to benefit from the robotic skill shortage
Alex Owen-Hill and Robotiq Inc.
22 Apr 2016
Robotics is going to be one of the biggest job creators in modern history. But are there enough qualified people to fill those jobs? As various sectors announce skill shortages, we looked at how robot...
Big day for robotics: 3 fundings and a merger acquisition
Frank Tobe
21 Apr 2016
Auris Surgical Robotics will acquire Hansen Medical for $80M+, PrecisionHawk raised $18M to help bring commercial drones safely into US airspace, and SkySafe raised $3M to disable badly behaving ...
Should robots be gendered?
Alan Winfield
20 Apr 2016
Should robots be gendered? I have serious doubts about the morality of designing and building robots to resemble men or women, boys or girls. Let me explain why....
GM’s purchase of Cruise fuels interest in self-driving car kits
Frank Tobe
19 Apr 2016
Most car companies are remaking themselves into tech startups as they move toward offering fully autonomous self-driving vehicles. Yet thousands of tractors already use self-driving kits as ...
How would a robocar handle an oncoming tsunami?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
19 Apr 2016
Recently, a reddit user posted a short video of a lucky driver in Japan who was able to turn his car around just in time to escape the torrent of the tsunami....
Industrial robot sales for 2015 set a new record
Frank Tobe
18 Apr 2016
In a flurry of press releases, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) revealed details of 2015 industrial robot sales of 240,000 units. This set a new sales record and reflected an 8...
comma.ai’s neural network car and new technology in robocars
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
15 Apr 2016
Perhaps the world’s most exciting new technology today are deep neural networks, in particular convolutional neural networks, such as “Deep Learning.” These networks are conquering some of the...
Grishin Robotics launches new $100M hardware fund
Frank Tobe
15 Apr 2016
In 2012, Dmitry Grishin, co-founder and CEO of Mail.Ru Group, the largest Internet and social networking company in the Russian-speaking world, seeded a fund with $25 million of his own money to f...
Autonomous truck platoons travel across Europe
Frank Tobe
14 Apr 2016
A dozen trucks arrived in Rotterdam after traveling across Europe in the European Truck Platooning Challenge. Six different truck makers participated: Scania, Daimler, Volvo, IVECO, MAN and DAF....
Filling the void left by Kiva Systems’ 2012 acquisition by Amazon
Frank Tobe
14 Apr 2016
In March 2012, in an effort to make their distribution centers (DCs) as efficient as possible, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million and almost immediately took them in house.
There was c...
Robust and transparent governance is key to building trust in driverless cars
Alan Winfield
12 Apr 2016
Sooner or later there will be fatal accident caused by a driverless car. It's not a question of if, but when. What happens immediately following that accident could have a profound effect on the nasce...
