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Is surveillance the new business model for consumer robotics?
Mark Stephen Meadows
06 May 2014
A discussion with Ryan Calo on Google, your personal data, and the consumer robotics market
Can someone tell me: What's Google doing, making robots? Or at least: What is it doing, making such acqui...
Reader poll: What do you think about autonomous cars?
Open Roboethics Initiative
29 Apr 2014
Today we drive our cars. In the future they’ll do the driving.
Autonomous cars are no longer a far-off futuristic dream, but something that we can expect to see on the road within the next dec...
5 cool (and informative) robot videos you don’t want to miss
Frank Tobe
29 Apr 2014
This wide-ranging group of robotics-related videos are worth watching. Set aside some time, make sure you have a hi-speed connection, and watch them. They range from cool to informative to downright s...
Make it smart; make it here!
Frank Tobe
28 Apr 2014
Make it smart and make it here! These are the rallying words heard around the world regarding keeping jobs in-country and manufacturing smarter, more efficiently, and less costly....
The evolution of assembly lines: A brief history
Robert Corday
24 Apr 2014
The assembly line has long been considered one of the greatest innovations of the 20th century. It has shaped the industrial world so strongly that businesses that did not adopt the practice soon beca...
UAV news wrap-up
Frank Tobe
22 Apr 2014
Google acquires Titan Aerospace for $60 million; Facebook acquires Ascenta for $20 million; Groupe Gorgé, through ECA, acquires Infotron for $10 million and the Navy is building a new UAV center. Her...
#Robots14 event “From Imagination to Market” is itself imaginative
Frank Tobe
22 Apr 2014
An adage in tech funding is "It's not what you know, it's who you know."
Aaron Horowitz (left) and Hannah Chung (in the bear suit on the right) boost that concept - and their visibility - by weari...
Xconomy Robo Madness
Frank Tobe
22 Apr 2014
From left: Devdutt Yellurkar, Partner, Charles River Ventures; Aydin Senkut, Managing Director, Felicis Ventures; Peter Hebert, Managing Partner, Lux Capital; Frank Tobe, Editor, The Robot Report and ...
ECA Group acquires UAV copter maker Infotron for $10 million
Frank Tobe
22 Apr 2014
Groupe Gorgé, via their subsidiary ECA S.A., has acquired French UAV copter provider Infotron for €2.5 million and 375,000 shares of ECA - a combined value of around $10 million. The acquisition s...
Titan Aerospace sells again — this time to Google
Frank Tobe
18 Apr 2014
Early in March of this year TechCrunch reported that Facebook was in talks to acquire Titan Aerospace, a UAV start-up that makes solar-powered aerial robots that can fly for up to five years without n...
Filling in the puzzle pieces of Willow Garage and Savioke
Frank Tobe
14 Apr 2014
People say the darndest things! And some of those statements add to the puzzle that is Willow Garage....
Apple buys UK speech recognition firm Novauris to help improve Siri
Frank Tobe
04 Apr 2014
Voice recognition is a timely science not only because of all the human-automobile communication offered by car companies, but also by smart devices and their growing use of voice interf...
The Economist 14-page Special Report: Rise of the Robots—Cool!
Frank Tobe
02 Apr 2014
The Economist, a prestigious London-based business magazine zealously read around the world, has a 14-page Special Report in their current issue. 'Rise of the Robots' offers insight into...
Au revoir, French entrepreneurs – except for a bastion of robotics innovators in Lyon
Frank Tobe
25 Mar 2014
In a serious critique of French business practices, the International New York Times wrote about a brain drain from France - a migration of aspiring entrepreneurs feeling that they have to leave Fran...
DARPA’s Gill Pratt on Google’s robotics investments
Gill Pratt and Robohub Editors
19 Mar 2014
When Google bought Boston Dynamics last December, the news made headlines, but it was not the first time the Internet giant has invested in DARPA-funded robotics. As part of Robohub's Big Deals series...
Snowden BEAMs into TED: How robotic telepresence disrupts borders
Hallie Siegel and Andra Keay
19 Mar 2014
Chris Anderson interviews Edward Snowden, who appears at TED 2014 in Vancouver via BEAM telepresence robot from an unknown location in Russia.
Travel in some parts of the world, or for some people, c...
Are telepresence robots really robots? Part II
Frank Tobe
19 Mar 2014
Edward Snowden BEAMed into a TED Talk earlier this week with attention-grabbing headlines. With much less fanfare, this writer participated in a panel in Lyon, France while...
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...
Rehab robots, smart prostheses and exoskeletons to reach $1.8 billion by 2020
Frank Tobe
15 Mar 2014
A Wintergreen Research report says that the rehabilitation robot market will grow from $43.3 million to $1.8 billion by 2020 as a result of the effectiveness of robotic treatment methods....
Are telepresence robots really robots?
Frank Tobe
14 Mar 2014
Are telepresence robots really robotic? Is the da Vinci robotic surgical system robotic? Is a car with adaptive cruise control acting robotically? Well … no to all three questions.
All thre...
Nicola Tomatis on “What does it take to get from imagination to market?”
Nicola Tomatis
14 Mar 2014
RBI Update
The short answer is: a lot of patience and perseverance!
More seriously, this is one of the most frustrating aspects of entrepreneurship. High-tech entrepreneurs are supposed to be inno...
Schunk to Google: Welcome to the robotics game
Henrik A. Schunk
12 Mar 2014
The continuing interest of Google in robotics over the last years and its newest activities in this regard confirms what all players active in robotics will confirm: service robotics is on the thresho...
Robert Morris on “What does it take to get from imagination to market?”
Robert Morris
12 Mar 2014
This is a really important question, and one that our community should focus on more. That said, the answer is not truly profound or particularly obscure. It takes three things: doing something people...
Andra Keay on “What does it take to get from imagination to market?”
Andra Keay
12 Mar 2014
The rise of online crowdfunding platforms over the last decade has created a whole new pathway for some robot startups. In the process, crowdfunding campaigns have helped to catapult hardware and robo...
Mark Stephen Meadows on “What does it take to get from imagination to market?”
Mark Stephen Meadows
12 Mar 2014
There are two parts to this process: the invisible and visible.
Rodin once said that sculpture is an art dedicated to holes. What he meant is that great work is invisible: if you are building a tec...
What does it take to get from imagination to market?
RBI Editors
12 Mar 2014
It's the top-of-mind question for every would-be entrepreneur, and with the Robot Launch 2014 competition deadline coming up on March 30, it's an especially fitting question to pose to our panelists t...
Machine consciousness: Fact or fiction?
Igor Aleksander and Footnote
10 Mar 2014
My workday is over. What do I want to do now? I picture calling my wife to suggest dinner at that nice Italian restaurant and imagine the taste of gnocchi quattro formaggi. Then I remember promising ...
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...
Why robots will not be smarter than humans by 2029
Alan Winfield
07 Mar 2014
Statue of Alan Turing. Photo credit: Neil Crosby
In the last few days we've seen a spate of headlines like 2029: the year when robots will have the power to outsmart their makers, all occasioned by ...
Putting the IV into Intelligent Virtual Assistants
Mark Stephen Meadows
06 Mar 2014
The incoming second wave of contextual agents
There's a virtual lobby of Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) waiting to help us these days. These multi-million dollar systems include Yahoo's Don...
Proletarian robots getting cheaper to exploit
Frank Tobe
06 Mar 2014
After laughing uncomfortably at the headline from The Moscow Times reporting about the recent Skolkovo Robotics Conference, I parsed through the wording and found the intended meaning. But that proces...
Loving your #startup to death
Andra Keay
05 Mar 2014
The world may be a harsh critic, but most good ideas die because they are given too much love. If you've got a startup or project, you're probably loving it to death right now, and your friends and fa...
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...
Academic and industry collaboration (Part 4): Interview with Raffaello D’Andrea
Florian Röhrbein
28 Feb 2014
In this 4th interview of our four-part ECHORD series, conducted last June, Sascha Griffiths from TUM talks to Raffaello D'Andrea, Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich and technical c...
ShanghAI Lectures: Serge Kernbach “Collective and Modular Robotics: Fundamentials and Frontiers”
Nathan Labhart
27 Feb 2014
Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2010-12-02
Collective systems play very important role on Earth, and we encounter them in all sizes, scales and forms; in biological and technological areas; in...
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...
