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5G fast and ultra-low latency robot control demonstrated
Frank Tobe
13 Oct 2017
SoftBank and Huawei jointly demonstrated various use cases for their forthcoming 5G network. 5G commercial services, which will provide ultra-high throughput of over 800 Mbps with ultra-low latency tr...
Industrial cleaning equipment maker Nilfisk goes public
Frank Tobe
12 Oct 2017
Danish Nilfisk Holding A/S began being listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange under symbol NLFSK after being spun off from NKT A/S, a Danish conglomerate. Nilfisk is one of the world’s leading sup...
Robocar-only highways are not quite so nice an idea as expected
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
11 Oct 2017
Recently Madrona Ventures, in partnership with Craig Mundie (former Microsoft CTO) released a white paper proposing an autonomous vehicle corridor between Seattle and Vancouver on I-5 and BC Highway 9...
GM accepts all liability in robocars, and other news
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
11 Oct 2017
General Motors announced this week that they would “take full responsibility” if a crash takes place during an autonomous driving trip. This follows a pledge to do the same made some time ago by D...
25 women in robotics you need to know about – 2017
Ada Lovelace Day on October 10 2017 is a day to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and there was no shortage of women to feature on Robohub’s annual Ada Lovelace Day “25 women in ro...
Everything’s bigger in China
Frank Tobe
10 Oct 2017
Recent news about growth of Chinese robotics and related AI indicate just how massive their investments are and how well they are paying off. For example, 90% of the personal robots on display at the ...
September 2017 fundings, acquisitions and IPOs
Frank Tobe
05 Oct 2017
26 different startups were funded to the tune of $507 million in September, up from $369 million in August. Six acquisitions were reported during the month including Deere’s acquisition of Cali...
Global robot growth causing shortages in critical components
Frank Tobe
03 Oct 2017
Two reputable research resources are reporting that the robotics industry is growing more rapidly than expected. BCG (Boston Consulting Group) is conservatively projecting that the market will reach $...
Robotics, the traditional path and new approaches
Víctor Mayoral Vilches
20 Sep 2017
Robotics, like many other technologies, suffered from an inflated set of expectations resulting in a decrease of the developments and results during the 90s. Over the last years, several groups though...
The importance of research reproducibility in robotics
Fabio Bonsignorio
20 Sep 2017
As highlighted in a previous post, despite the fact that robotics is increasingly regarded as a 'Science', as shown by the launch of new journals such as Science Robotics, reproducibility of experimen...
iRobot on the defensive
Frank Tobe
20 Sep 2017
SharkNinja, a well-known marketer of home consumer products, has entered the American robotic vacuum market with a product that is priced to compete against iRobot’s Roomba line of floor cleaners. T...
New NHTSA Robocar regulations are a major, but positive, reversal
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
15 Sep 2017
NHTSA released their latest draft robocar regulations just a week after the U.S. House passed a new regulatory regime and the senate started working on its own. The proposed regulations preempt state ...
NTSB Tesla crash report and new NHTSA regulations to come
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
13 Sep 2017
The NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) has released a preliminary report on the fatal Tesla crash with the full report expected later this week. The report is much less favourable to autopilo...
United Technologies acquires Rockwell Collins for $30 billion
Frank Tobe
08 Sep 2017
Aerospace conglomerate United Technologies is paying $30 billion to acquire Rockwell Collins in a deal that creates one of the world’s largest makers of civilian and defense aircraft components.&nbs...
Planning for hurricanes and other disasters with robocars
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
08 Sep 2017
How will robocars fare in a disaster, like Harvey in Houston, Irma, or the tsunamis in Japan or Indonesia, or a big Earthquake, or a fire, or 9/11, or a war?...
Isaac Asimov’s 3 laws of AI – updated
Frank Tobe
05 Sep 2017
In an OpEd piece in the NY Times, and in a TED Talk late last year, Oren Etzioni, PhD, author, and CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, suggested an update for Isaac Asimov’s...
August 2017 fundings, acquisitions, IPOs and failures
Frank Tobe
02 Sep 2017
August fundings totaled $369 million but the number of August transactions, seven, was down from previous months, eg: both July and June had 19 fundings each. Acquisitions, on the other hand, remained...
Robots won’t steal our jobs if we put workers at center of AI revolution
The Conversation
02 Sep 2017
by Thomas Kochan, MIT Sloan School of Management and Lee Dyer, Cornell University
The technologies driving artificial intelligence are expanding exponentially, leading many technology experts and f...
Industrial robots in China up, up and away!
Frank Tobe
30 Aug 2017
China has rapidly become a global leader in robotics and automation. 2016 annual sales of industrial robots reached the highest level ever for any single country: 87,000 units (up 27% from 2015) and C...
Those amazing flying machines
Oliver Mitchell
16 Aug 2017
Last year, Intel partnered with Lady Gaga on the Super Bowl Halftime Show to showcase its latest aerial technology called “Shooting Star.” Intel did a reprise performance of its Shooting S...
US Army and Navy ordered to halt use of DJI drones
Frank Tobe
11 Aug 2017
The U.S. Army has ordered its members to stop using drones made by Chinese manufacturer SZ DJI Technology because of "cyber vulnerabilities." The directive applies to all DJI drones and syst...
How artificial intelligence will transform higher education
David Gann and Mark Dodgson
09 Aug 2017
As AI surpasses human abilities in Go and poker – two decades after Deep Blue trounced chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov – it is seeping into our lives in ever more profound ways. It affects the wa...
The agricultural labor conundrum
Frank Tobe
09 Aug 2017
Instead of worrying so much about robots taking away jobs, maybe we should worry more about wages being too low for robots to even get a chance. Seasonal labor for harvesting agricultural products, p...
Auris Surgical Robotics raises another $280 million!
Frank Tobe
07 Aug 2017
Auris Surgical Robotics, the Silicon Valley startup headed by Frederic Moll who previously co-founded Hansen Medical and Intuitive Surgical, raised $280 million in a Series D round led by Coatue Manag...
July 2017 fundings, acquisitions, IPOs and failures
Frank Tobe
01 Aug 2017
July 2017 was a big month for robotics-related company funding. Four raised $588 million and 19 others raised $370.6 million for a monthly total of $958.6 million. Acquisitions als...
Many different approaches to Robocar Mapping
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
01 Aug 2017
Almost all robocars use maps to drive. Not the basic maps you find in your phone navigation app, but more detailed maps that help them understand where they are on the road, and where they should go. ...
China’s appetite now focused on artificial intelligence
Frank Tobe
27 Jul 2017
China has recently announced their long-term goal to become #1 in A.I. by 2030. They plan to grow their A.I. industry to over $22 billion by 2020, $59 billion by 2025 and $150 billion by 203...
Indoor robots gaining momentum – and notoriety
Frank Tobe
25 Jul 2017
Recent events demonstrate the growing presence of indoor mobile robots: (1) Savioke’s hotel butler robot won the 2017 IERA inventors award; (2) Knightscope’s security robot misto...
ST Engineering acquires mobile robot maker Aethon for $36 million
Frank Tobe
25 Jul 2017
Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd (ST Engineering) has acquired Pittsburgh, PA-based robotics firm Aethon Inc through Vision Technologies Land Systems, Inc. (VTLS), and its wholly-owned...
Does the next industrial revolution spell the end of manufacturing jobs?
The Conversation
25 Jul 2017
By Jeff Morgan, Trinity College Dublin
Robots have been taking our jobs since the 1960s. So why are politicians and business leaders only now becoming so worried about robots causing mass unemploym...
Federal regulations pass next hurdle
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
21 Jul 2017
This week's news is preliminary, but a U.S. house committee panel passed some new federal regulations which suggest sweeping change in the US regulatory approach to robocars....
FIRST global competition off to a rousing start with all teams getting visas
Frank Tobe
19 Jul 2017
After much uproar, media attention, and political pressure, Pres. Trump intervened and enabled all the teams headed to Washington, DC for the F.I.R.S.T Global Robotics Championship, whose visas had be...
News and commentary from AUVSI/TRB Automated Vehicle Symposium 2017
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
18 Jul 2017
In San Francisco, I’m just back from the annual Automated Vehicle Symposium, co-hosted by the AUVSI (a commercial unmanned vehicle organization) and the Transportation Research Board, a governme...
Hand-wringing hides the fact that Mexico is employing more, and fewer are coming to work in the U.S.
Frank Tobe
18 Jul 2017
The Association for Advancing Automation (A3) cites that between 2010 and 2016, 136,748 robots were shipped to the US —the most in any seven-year period in the US robotics industry. At the same ...
Asimov’s Laws won’t stop robots harming humans so we’ve developed a better solution
The Conversation
17 Jul 2017
By Christoph Salge, Marie Curie Global Fellow, University of Hertfordshire
How do you stop a robot from hurting people? Many existing robots, such as those assembling cars in factories, shut down ...
Singapore: An autonomous innovation center
Oliver Mitchell
16 Jul 2017
Jim Robinson of RRE Ventures said it best last month at the Silicon Dragon Conference when comparing Silicon Valley to New York, “There are two kinds of centers that have a lot of startups and t...
