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Elon Musk wants to make a flying car | The Independent
Hallie Siegel
09 Jun 2014
"Maybe we'll make a flying car, just for fun," said Elon Musk. From any other businessman, such a statement would be a joke. But the billionaire, 42, who has poured the millions he made from the sal...
Recent funding announcements
Frank Tobe
09 Jun 2014
Several robotics funding announcements have been made recently, the biggest of which was announced at AUTOMATICA 2014. The Partnership for Robotics in Europe launched SPARC - a €2.8 billion public-p...
SoftBank + Aldebaran = Pepper
Frank Tobe
06 Jun 2014
The latest creation from Aldebaran Robotics - Pepper - is designed to live with humans. It doesn’t clean or cook but it talks, is mobile, can read emotions, and reacts aut...
ShanghAI Lectures: Claude Patrick Siegenthaler “In Search of Embodied Intelligence in Markets”
Nathan Labhart
05 Jun 2014
Guest talk in the ShanghAI Lectures, 2011-11-03
In this guest lecture, Claude Patrick Siegenthaler from Switzerland gives a brief introduction to economics and markets and relates them to intellige...
IFR reports record 2013 industrial robot sales
Frank Tobe
04 Jun 2014
At a press conference this morning at AUTOMATICA 2014 in Munich, International Federation of Robotics (IFR) President Arturo Baroncelli announced that 179,000 industrial robots were sold in 2013, a 12...
EU launches world’s largest civilian robotics programme – 240,000 new jobs expected
the European Commission
03 Jun 2014
The European Commission and 180 companies and research organisations (under the umbrella of euRobotics) have launched the world’s largest civilian research and innovation programme in robotics....
17% compound annual growth rate forecast for home cleaning, remote presence and home entertainment robots
Frank Tobe
02 Jun 2014
A recent Business Insider article, Beyond Factory Robots: Market Forecast and Growth Trends for Consumer and Office Robots, concludes that for the period from now until 2019, ...
Intel’s 3-D printed robot will hit the market later this year | CNN
Hallie Siegel
29 May 2014
Intel plans to bring its fully customizable, 3-D printable robot kit to market by the end of the year, with a consumer version starting around $1,600.
The hardware designs will be freely available...
The answer to mis-selling? Let a robot pick your investments | The Telegraph
Hallie Siegel
29 May 2014
Chris Williams, a director on the Institute of Financial Planning (IFP), said: "Technology is the key to bridging the advice gap. Clients are already engaging with technology in their everyday lives a...
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...
Meet the winners of Robot Launch 2014
Robohub Editors
27 May 2014
In February 2014, Robohub and Silicon Valley Robotics launched the first global startup competition for robotics. More than 75 startups from 19 countries entered the competition, with robotics inn...
Meet your (ROS-based) cleaning team from Avidbots
Open Source Robotics Foundation
26 May 2014
The folks at Avidbots — who won an honourable mention in the Robot Launch 2014 competition — are developing ROS-based commercial cleaning robots....
Titan Medical secures $34.8 million from public offering
Frank Tobe
23 May 2014
Titan Medical, a publicly-traded Canadian start-up company developing a robotic surgical system for minimally-invasive surgeries, announced the completion of two rounds of public offering totally $34....
Robots begin to attack waste and dirt
Frank Tobe
18 May 2014
In Finland, there's an army of robots sorting, selecting and processing trash, while in Cincinnati bactobots are targeting and neutralizing bacteria in waste water. Here's a review of wha...
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...
Recent robotics-related IPOs
Frank Tobe
26 Apr 2014
Since late November, 2013 there have been three robotic companies that have gone public on U.S. and global stock exchanges: Medtech, Ekso Bionics and Cyberdyne....
Launching RoboJobs: The new dedicated jobs board for the global robotics community
Hallie Siegel
22 Apr 2014
RoboJobs is a new dedicated jobs board for the global robotics community that connects both seasoned robotics experts and recent top graduates with entrepreneurs and established businesses seeking the...
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...
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....
Robot Launch 2014: Announcing the top 30
Andra Keay
09 Apr 2014
Are you ready to find out who the semifinalists are in our first Robot Launch global startup competition for robotics? With 76 applications from 19 different countries, and entries covering industrial...
Last days to enter Robot Launch 2014
Andra Keay
26 Mar 2014
Robot Launch 2014 is the first global online startup competition for robotics, and as the deadline for first round entrants approaches (11pm PDT on March 30) we're excited to see just where in the w...
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...
ROV operations expenditures to grow to $1.5 billion by 2017
Frank Tobe
24 Mar 2014
Douglas-Westwood, an energy research group, says (in their $5,000 World ROV Operations Market Forecast 2013-2017 report), that ROV operations expenditures will grow 80% over the next 5 years....
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...
Robotics in reach: Your smartphone could be a robot brain
Daniel Faggella and TechEmergence
18 Mar 2014
António Câmara is a man with a vision.
Despite the widespread adoption of computers and digital technology over the last few decades, how we interact with that technology, and use technology to i...
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...
NAO Next Gen now available for a wider audience
AJung Moon
13 Mar 2014
As of yesterday, you can get the adorable and versatile humanoid robot NAO from Aldebaran Robotics for yourself, even if you are not an academic or a hardcore developer. According to Génération R...
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...
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...
Facebook plans to offer Internet service using aerial robots
Frank Tobe
05 Mar 2014
In a story on TechCrunch, it was revealed that Facebook is in talks to acquire or partner with Titan Aerospace. Titan makes solar-powered aerial robots that can fly for up to five years without needin...
With 11,000 pre-orders, Play-i gets $8 million Series A
Frank Tobe
05 Mar 2014
It was just a few months ago that Play-i raised over $1.4 million on Kickstarter. With a heavy advertising buy during the holiday season they now have 11,000 pre-orders for their Bo and Yana...
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...
