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GreyOrange gets $30m for mobile robots
Frank Tobe
14 Aug 2015
GreyOrange, an India and Singapore-based materials handling startup, has received $30m in equity funding to ramp up production of their Butler shelves-to-picker robot system....
Google Alphabet: Is it good for robocars?
Brad Templeton, Robocars.com
14 Aug 2015
Everybody has heard about Google’s restructuring. In the new setup, Google X, which includes the self-driving car division, will be a subsidiary of the new Alphabet holding company, and no longer pa...
Money continues to flow into robotics startups
Frank Tobe
06 Aug 2015
This week saw fresh funding of $11.2m for Virtual Incision, a startup developing robotically assisted surgical devices, and another $11m for Jibo, the company founded by MIT Media Lab's Cynthia Breaze...
Ads, sales and shows make a business case for robotics
Frank Tobe
03 Aug 2015
Clever ads that emphasize ROI, presentations that show production benefits, new robot sales records, capital expenditure for warehousing systems and increased attendance at trade shows are all focusi...
Telcos vs. big data companies: Which sector will drive consumer robotics?
Hallie Siegel and Robohub Editors
30 Jul 2015
NTT’s recent entry into consumer robotics suggests that it’s not just about Google vs Amazon, or Softbank vs NTT anymore, but about telcos vs big data companies. With two major and distinct sector...
Softbank will take pre-orders for enterprise version of Pepper starting Oct 1
Hallie Siegel
30 Jul 2015
Developing Story: Softbank today announced that it will be taking preorders for the enterprise version of their Pepper robot, called "Pepper for Biz" starting October 1 this year. This comes one day a...
Japanese telcos vie for share in consumer robot-as-a-service business
Hallie Siegel
29 Jul 2015
View image | gettyimages.com
Yesterday a second Japanese telecommunication firm entered the consumer robot-as-a-service market when the state-owned Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NT...
Is all the hype about drone commercialization clouding our judgement?
Robert Morris
28 Jul 2015
The hype around the consumer drone industry is so thick that it clouds our judgement. It is as if our biggest boosters have forgotten what our technology stack really does, what it doesn’t do, and ...
Robotics fundings, IPOs and acquisitions for June/July
Frank Tobe
24 Jul 2015
Below are recaps of the eleven June and July fundings, IPOs and acquisitions for robot and robotics related companies, followed by a thoughtful piece by Farhad Manjoo of the NY Times about why start-u...
Robot as marketing strategy: Bosch takes a bet on Rotimatic’s consumer flatbread maker
Andra Keay
22 Jul 2015
First it was robot vacuum cleaners; now it's robot kitchen appliances. Robots are back in the popular imagination as household helpers, and industry seems to be taking a bet on leveraging that int...
Robotic flatbread maker gets $11.5 million from two venture funds
Frank Tobe
22 Jul 2015
Zimplistic, the Singapore and Silicon Valley startup behind the Rotimatic, a robotic home flatbread maker, sold over $5 million at their launch last year. Today, they have a backlog of $72M in orders...
Service robots get multiple positive forecasts
Frank Tobe
20 Jul 2015
UPDATED 7/22/15 Commercial drones will reach $4.8B by 2021. Agricultural robots will reach $16.8B by 2021 and $73.9B by 2024. And demand for healthcare robotics to show "tremendous growth" in the next...
Another robot company acquired: Vecna acquires VGo
Frank Tobe
19 Jul 2015
Vecna, a growing robotic mobility provider for hospitals and warehouses, acquired VGo, a provider of mobile telepresence devices, for an undisclosed amount....
BUDDY opensource companion bot meets 100K crowdfunding goal in 1 day; now >200% funded
Blue Frog Robotics
15 Jul 2015
[tweetquote]BUDDY has something to smile about.[/tweetquote] The new open source companion robot by Blue Frog Robotics, launched an Indiegogo campaign on July 7th and sailed past its $100K crowdfu...
Japan’s Haneda Airport to deploy 3 types of robots from Cyberdyne
Frank Tobe
13 Jul 2015
View image | gettyimages.com
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Cyberdyne, the inventor of the HAL exoskeleton, is expanding their product line and Japan's Haneda Airport is their first customer....
Alan Turing robot makes its debut at Startup Village 2015
Robohub Editors
10 Jul 2015
Tho startups from the robotics cluster at Skolkovo — Nanosemantics and Lexy — teamed up with the Russian Neurobotics, to recreate a robotic version of the British computer science pioneer A...
Pepper robots to roll out at 1,000 per month
Frank Tobe
10 Jul 2015
SoftBank announced that their little Pepper robot will be available for sale beginning August 1st at the rate of 1,000 per month after selling out their first 1,000 Peppers in one online minute in Jun...
What’s propelling China’s industrial robot revolution
Frank Tobe
03 Jul 2015
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Xi Jinping, China's President, last year called for an “industrial robot revolution.” Since then China has created policies giving value added tax refunds and subsidies to companies m...
Series of research reports evaluate robotics industry
Frank Tobe
23 Jun 2015
Businesses, analysts and investors often need and are willing to pay for more facts than they can gather from their sales and R&D departments; detailed comparative reviews of the landscape of a pa...
Forget Google and unicorns, Asian dragons are going to dominate robotics
Andra Keay
19 Jun 2015
Yesterday SoftBank, FoxConn and Alibaba cemented a strong robotics initiative. Having acquired a majority stake in Aldebaran in 2012 (just after the Amazon acquisition of Kiva), SoftBank’s interest...
SoftBank invests in Fetch Robotics
Frank Tobe
17 Jun 2015
Fetch Robotics, which just demo’d their Fetch and Freight robot system at ICRA in May, announced receiving $20 million from SoftBank, O’Reilly AlphaTech and Shasta Ventures....
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podcast
CyPhy LVL 1 Drone, with Helen Griener
Audrow Nash
12 Jun 2015
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Helen Greiner, CEO and founder of CyPhy Works and co-founder of iRobot, about CyPhy Work’s LVL 1 photography drone. The LVL 1 drone has six propellers that a...
WeRobot 2015 Panel 2: Robot passports, with Anupam Chander
Tech Policy Lab University of Washington
11 Jun 2015
Anupam Chander’s paper, “Robots, the Internet of Things and the future of trade,” is the first effort to locate and analyze these complimentary technologies within an international trading frame...
What’s hot in robotics? Four trends to watch
Frank Tobe
11 Jun 2015
Four diverse trends are having a big effect on the robotics industry worldwide, and the global media and financial gurus are paying attention to the process....
Robots and manufacturing: Facts and figures from the Wall Street Journal
Frank Tobe
04 Jun 2015
A special Wall Street Journal report called Meet the New Robots: Manufacturing, Unleashing Innovation appeared in its own section in the Wall Street Journal this week. Lots of good facts, figures an...
Corindus Vascular Robotics goes public
Frank Tobe
01 Jun 2015
Corindus Vascular Robotics raised $42 million last week by offering 11 million shares at $3.80 and going public on the NYSE MKT exchange, a special market for small-cap growth companies....
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183
podcast
RoboBusiness Exhibition, with RoboBusiness 2014
Audrow Nash
29 May 2015
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to several robotics companies at the company showcase at RoboBusiness 2014, which took place in Boston, Massachusetts....
Swiss-based ABB to manufacture robots in US
Frank Tobe
24 May 2015
Robot manufacturing started in the US in 1961 when 26 Unimates - the first industrial robots - were made and deployed at a GM factory in Ewing, NJ. But, over the years, manufacturing and manufacturers...
April equity deals, acquisitions and Chinese funds
Frank Tobe
19 May 2015
Money is flowing to robotics-related startup companies. Q1 saw nineteen equity deals totalling $317 million, and three acquisitions of undetermined amounts, but money also flowed in April....
Danish co-bot maker Universal Robots sells for $350 million
Frank Tobe
13 May 2015
Privately held Danish company Universal Robots - the successful producer of the UR line of collaborative robots - has sold to Massachusetts-based Teradyne, a provider of electronic testing equipment....
Airware launches new system and gets funded
Frank Tobe
11 May 2015
Airware received an undisclosed investment from Intel Capital, which now joins GE Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and a host of other prominent VCs in funding this au...
Consumer and B2B drone making is big business
Frank Tobe
08 May 2015
Lobbying for drone special interests rose from $35 million in 2011 to more than $186 million in 2014. But that is dwarfed by investments in drone makers such as DJI and 3DR, who just raised $75M and...
Shadow Robot’s Dexterous Hand can do more than cook up a storm
Adriana Hamacher
07 May 2015
The Shadow Robot Company has been perfecting its robot hands for almost two decades, but it took just a short demo by the world’s first robot chef last month to propel this small, London-based start...
Competition heats up for consumer-friendly aerial photography drones
Hallie Siegel and Ioannis K. Erripis
06 May 2015
Competition is fierce in the world of consumer drones these days, especially among companies marketing products than can produce pro quality video and photography without having to hire a drone ...
Two profitable uses for robots
Frank Tobe
05 May 2015
Industrial robots keep humming along, doing the dull, dirty and dangerous work of factories around the world. Newer applications are less often known but are quickly emerging. Here are two novel ones....
Competing robotic warehouse systems
Frank Tobe
01 May 2015
As sales via online retailers steadily increase, so too does the speed with which customers want their goods delivered. Amazon, eBay, and Google all have massive and speedy warehousing operations atte...
