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Science, startups and industry at RSS2014 (Part 2)
Andra Keay
15 Jul 2014
The 10th annual Robotics Science and Systems conference (RSS14) is on at the University of California, Berkeley, July 12 to 16, and we are picking up where we left off yesterday on our coverage of t...
Amazon requests FAA permission to test delivery drones
Dronologista
14 Jul 2014
In April this year, Amazon.com issued a shareholder letter that stated: “The Prime Air team is already flight testing our 5th and 6th generation aerial vehicles…″ Fast forward three months to t...
Amazon seeks FAA permission to test drones outdoors near Seattle
Andra Keay
13 Jul 2014
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is seeking permission from U.S. regulators to test its delivery drones near Seattle, as part of a rapid expansion of a program that has sparked widespread deba...
Building Social Robots: The Journey of Pleo
Bob Christopher and Jibo
11 Jul 2014
Building a robot company is difficult, very difficult. It requires unwavering belief in yourself, in your idea, in your team and ultimately in your product. But it is also one of the most thrilling ex...
Drone startup: SR2
Dronologista
10 Jul 2014
There are number of industries that could harness the potential of UAVs, but they lack the skills and/or resources to design and build a reliable and professional system that fits their needs. SR2 w...
Startup Series #6: MIT Entreprise Forum VLAB
Andra Keay
09 Jul 2014
The VLAB Collaborative Robots forum on Thursday May 29 was a masterclass for robot startups. For 90 minutes at the Knight Management Center at Stanford, we heard all about the business of robotics fro...
The thriving drone community of South Africa
Dronologista
30 Jun 2014
Source: Skylab Productions
A couple of years ago, while I was living in Cape Town, I met a group of people who were so into drones and aerial filming that they managed to initiate me into the world ...
Global trends in robotics from patent analysis
Andra Keay
15 Jun 2014
120,000 robotics patents have been published in the last 10 years, tripling in rate from 2004 to 2013, according to the UK Intellectual Property Office Informatics Team. Unsurprisingly, there was a h...
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...
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...
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....
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...
Big deals: What it means to have the giants investing in robotics
Hallie Siegel
12 Feb 2014
If the world outside the robotics community didn't know about Boston Dynamics, Kiva and Nest, they do now. Recent robotics acquisitions and investments by major-league players like Google, Apple a...
Automation, not domination: How robots will take over our world
The first question people tend to ask when they find out you are a roboticist is, “When are robots going to take over the world and become our masters?” The answer to this question is a big “Ne...
DoD Unmanned Air, Sea & Ground Budget 2014-2018
Frank Tobe
03 Feb 2014
Within the defense sector, demand for unmanned air, ground and sea systems continues unabated. Drivers include combat operations, reduced military budgets, a changing national security environment and...
Agricultural robot market anticipated to reach $16.3 billion by 2020
Frank Tobe
01 Feb 2014
In a new $7,800 report by Wintergreen Research, significant growth is anticipated over the remainder of this decade in every aspect of farming, milking, food production and animal control....
Doggone it, there are no exciting consumer robots
Andra Keay
21 Jan 2014
If CES shows us anything it’s that consumer robots aren’t exciting, they’re appliances. But it’s exciting that we have a growing field of consumer robots, smart devices and appliances. Accordi...
7 consumer robots to look out for from CES 2014
Shima Rayej
11 Jan 2014
This year’s CES in Las Vegas showcased some of the latest technologies from both established and up-and-coming robotics companies. Drones, telepresence robots, automated cleaning devices and enter...
Snap 2014: Aerial drones and 3D mapping software for civil engineering surveying
Frank Tobe
06 Jan 2014
An Irish surveyor tested results (and had those results peer reviewed through the local university) of surveys done by drone and software vs. doing it by hand (which took days longer). The surveyor is...
Amazon Prime Air: 5 Predictions About the Retailer’s Delivery Drones | TIME
Hallie Siegel
02 Dec 2013
Assuming Amazon Prime Air eventually launches … there are a handful of predictions about the system itself and delivery-by-drone systems in general…
Read more by Doug Aamoth on TIME.com...
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos looks to the future | 60 Minutes
Hallie Siegel
02 Dec 2013
There has never been a company quite like Amazon. Conceived as an online book seller, Amazon has reinvented itself time and again, changing the way the world shops, reads and computes. Amazon has 225 ...
Amazon Promises Package Delivery By Drone: Is It for Real? | Automaton
Hallie Siegel
02 Dec 2013
Once you get past the wow factor [of Amazon's drone delivery announcement] and start thinking critically about what it would take to make something like this work in practice, it starts to look a lot...
Is this the right time for robotic startups?
Torsten Andre
14 Nov 2013
Last month the Pioneers Festival took place in the Imperial Palace, Vienna, Austria. According to its website, the festival is Europe's premium event for entrepreneurship and future technologies. Star...
Down on the farm with drones
Patrick Egan
29 Oct 2013
Photo credit: Patrick Egan.
There are bushels of folks out there now spending money and putting time in finding niches for unmanned systems that already exist. You may be saying, isn’t that what we...
RoboBusiness: Day Two
Robert Morris
26 Oct 2013
On a rare overcast day in San Jose, RoboBusiness got down to business with keynotes and the general exhibition in full swing. The morning held keynote speakers, breakouts in the afternoon, and then ...
Lay of the land: Unmanned systems coming to commercial agriculture
Rich Tuttle
25 Oct 2013
Yamaha is testing spraying vineyards in Napa Valley through a COA with the FAA. Photo courtesy Yamaha Corp.
With the global market for unmanned systems in agriculture on the rise, companies that ma...
RoboBusiness: Day one in the heart of Silicon Valley
Robert Morris
24 Oct 2013
RoboBusiness started Wednesday, with mostly panels, although Robohub's very own Andra Keay spiced things up quite a bit with a "Pitchfire" event showcasing robotics start-ups. Two themes were very m...
UBR-1 robot from Unbounded Robotics revolutionizes affordable mobile manipulation | Automaton
Hallie Siegel
21 Oct 2013
Why Affordable Mobile Manipulation Matters
Why could UBR-1 be so revolutionary for robotics right now? Really, it's the general area of mobile manipulation that has a huge amount of potential for t...
Unbounded Robotics launch affordable, all-purpose UBR-1
Andra Keay
21 Oct 2013
Unbounded Robotics today launched UBR-1, a robot that has many of us very excited. UBR is the first robot with intelligence, manipulation and mobility for below $50k. While UBR definitely resembles a ...
Pioneers kickstarts the start-up scene with a hands-on celebration of innovation
Hallie Siegel
17 Oct 2013
Andreas Tschas (far left) and Juergen Furian (far right) present a cheque to the 2012 Startup Challenge winner Poikos (centre). Photo credit: Heisenberg Media.
When founders Andreas Tschas and Juerge...
There are mobile robots and then there’s KUKA’s MOBILE robot
Frank Tobe
26 Sep 2013
... At the recent Hannover Messe trade fair, KUKA displayed their concept mobile robot showing how it could work a huge turbine blade.
... The device consisted of a KUKA omnimove mobile platform, a K...
Dash launching Dragon hardware crowdfunding platform
Andra Keay
08 Aug 2013
Dash is the first product to launch today on Dragon Innovation‘s new hardware crowdfunding site. Dragon Innovation was founded in 2009 by Scott Miller and Herman Pang, ex iRobot and Hasbro. Dragon a...
After a lackluster 2nd quarter, Hansen Medical gets a $93 million equity infusion
Frank Tobe
31 Jul 2013
Although the number of procedures using Hansen Medical's Magellan and Sensei robotic systems has risen, the number of units sold has fallen slightly and the company continues to operate in the red, he...
SUSBEXPO: The first unmanned systems business conference
Andra Keay
27 Jul 2013
SUSBEXPO is the first conference about unmanned systems to really focus on the growing commercial opportunities of this market. AUVSI put on a spectacular annual show, but it is predominantly militar...
