Robohub.org
Frank Tobe
Zymergen gets $130 million from SoftBank and other VCs
Frank Tobe
12 Oct 2016
SoftBank, the Japanese telecom conglomerate, led a group that included Iconiq Capital, Prelude Ventures, Tao Capital Partners, and seven others in a $130 million funding round for Zymergen to help ...
Samsung acquires Viv in a quest to link all its appliances
Frank Tobe
10 Oct 2016
Dag Kittlaus, founder and CEO of Siri, Inc., produced and uploaded an app into the Apple App store February 2010. The app quickly rose to 1st in the 'Lifestyle Section.' In March, Steve Jobs called Ki...
September fundings, acquisitions, IPOs and failures
Frank Tobe
05 Oct 2016
September continued the big-money spree for funding robotic startups. 10 good-sized deals and three little ones. Almost $220 million (bringing the year-to-date total well over $1 billion)! Plus, ano...
A look at a Danish robotics cluster
Frank Tobe
04 Oct 2016
There are many robotics clusters around the world successfully providing for the needs of their respective communities and a few not really achieving their desired goals. Odense and the Danish cluster...
GoPro unveils long-awaited Karma stabilized drone system and kit
Frank Tobe
30 Sep 2016
GoPro fans and the financial world have been looking forward to GoPro's new Karma since GoPro announced last December that it was working on building its first drone. When they delayed the release ...
46 research reports analyze the robotics industry and autonomous vehicles
Frank Tobe
29 Sep 2016
As autonomous cars begin to hit world markets in pilot tests and other ways, and before the International Federation of Robotics clarifies whether those vehicles are robots or not, two research firms ...
InterDrone 2016: Professionalization and business of drone industry
Frank Tobe
16 Sep 2016
InterDrone concluded their 2nd annual trade show and conference in Las Vegas. The differences between the 2015 event and this one reflect the rapid changes in the industry and can be seen as a predict...
Integrators are dead, long live the integrator
Frank Tobe
15 Sep 2016
For many years integrators have engineered, built and installed automation machinery for their manufacturer clients. As manufacturing has begun to move from mass production to mass customization,...
Top 10 technologies in precision agriculture
Frank Tobe
14 Sep 2016
PrecisionAg's editor Eric Sfiligoj has prepared a list of the top 10 technologies that are shaping precision ag today. Most involve some level of robotics, navigation, sensors and variable rate dispe...
Case IH displays new cab-less concept tractor
Frank Tobe
06 Sep 2016
Case IH (Case New Holland International Harvester) displayed their new cab-less tractor at a farming show in Iowa. The presentation was to show off what they hope will be the future: an autonomous...
August fundings and acquisitions
Frank Tobe
05 Sep 2016
August was another big month for funding robotic startups. 18 deals. Almost $430 million (bringing the year-to-date total well over $1 billion)! Plus, another $1 billion paid in August for four acqui...
Two LiDAR makers each get big funding
Frank Tobe
26 Aug 2016
In anticipation of the need for LiDAR devices in cars with assisted steering and other self-driving technologies, both Velodyne and Quanergy received funding. Quanergy raised $90 million and Velodyne...
News bureaus and networks setting up drone divisions
Frank Tobe
22 Aug 2016
CNN just inaugurated their new drone division. So have many other news organizations. Network providers are also setting up drone operations for a variety of purposes....
As Ford sets a date, Jibo retracts theirs
Frank Tobe
19 Aug 2016
Bringing a complex new product to market is an intensive process fraught with problems. Getting hardware ready for manufacturing is often the easy part; it's the software and regulatory compliance tha...
Midea’s masterplan to become China’s robot powerhouse
Frank Tobe
18 Aug 2016
Chinese consumer manufacturer Midea, after having spent over $4 billion to acquire 94% of German robot maker Kuka, is planning to spend an additional $1.5 billion to turn itself into China's preemin...
IDC awards 5 warehouse robotics innovators
Frank Tobe
17 Aug 2016
International Data Corporation (IDC) has awarded five pioneering players in the warehouse robotics market with the 2016 IDC Innovators Award. Companies selected met the following criteria: revenue of...
What happens when a robot company sells off a division?
Frank Tobe
11 Aug 2016
Spin-offs are disrupting, but often necessary. Here are two recent examples: iRobot sold off its Defense & Security Business Unit to a private equity firm, and Harvest Automation sold the IP an...
July fundings, acquisitions and failures
Frank Tobe
03 Aug 2016
Despite all the high-profile billion-dollar acquisitions, eg: ARM by SoftBank, KUKA by Midea and Uber China by Didi Chuxing, M&A are down 19% this year, according to both Forbes and CB Insights. B...
Coming very soon: robotic toys, robot-made hamburgers, mobile robot deliveries
Frank Tobe
12 Jul 2016
Re-joining the ranks, Sony announced a return to robotics. Momentum is opening a robot hamburger shop. And Starship is beginning to deliver food to three cities in Europe....
62 market research reports study robotics industry
Frank Tobe
11 Jul 2016
The number of research reports studying the robotics industry is growing exponentially. To date in 2016 there have been 109 on subjects ranging from overly broad to very drilled-down views of the in...
Logistic companies Swisslog, Dematic, Egemin and Intelligrated all acquired
Frank Tobe
05 Jul 2016
First, the KION Group acquires Dematic for $2.5 billion. A week later, Honeywell acquires Intelligrated for $1.5 billion. KION acquires Retrotech and earlier still Egemin, while Kuka acquires Swisslog...
May fundings, acquisitions and IPOs
Frank Tobe
01 Jun 2016
UPDATE: June 1, 2016: Forbes wrote today that Toyota is in discussions with Google not only for Boston Dynamics but also for Schaft, the Japanese startup that won the DARPA Robotics Challenge — a...
47 reports dissect and examine the robot industry
Frank Tobe
04 Apr 2016
The robotics industry has graduated to be big business -- at least for research firms. 47 different reports on subjects ranging from broad to very drilled-down views of the industry are analyzed and...
March fundings, acquisitions, IPOs and failures
Frank Tobe
04 Apr 2016
Funding for robotics startup companies rose dramatically in 2015 reaching record highs in deals and dollars. CB Insights, a VC database provider, reported similar findings as seen in their quarterly f...
3D Robotics undergoing layoffs and other challenges
Frank Tobe
29 Mar 2016
3D Robotics unveiled sweeping changes by closing its San Diego facility, reducing staff at its Berkeley headquarters and in Austin, TX, and acknowledging that co-founder and president Jordi Muñoz ...
Harvest Automation stumbles with warehouse robot
Frank Tobe
19 Mar 2016
In a Boston Globe story by Scott Kirsner, it was revealed that Harvest Automation's CEO has departed, as have 3/4 of the 30 employees that worked there in 2015. The company is attempting to sell it...
Collaborative robots are broadening their marketplaces
Frank Tobe
08 Mar 2016
Universal Robots, the Danish manufacturer of a line of collaborative robots (also called "co-bots"), recently published financial statements which provide valuable insights into the growth potential ...
Robo-Stox: A dream come true
Frank Tobe
23 Oct 2013
Throughout my 35-year career in the computer business, I always read and thought about what disruptive technology was ahead. When I had an IBM mainframe, I was looking at the DEC mini-computers and ev...
Is open source a good business model for robotics?
RBI Editors
09 Oct 2013
Open source vs. proprietary software is an age old question. Since the advent of robotics, we also have the question of open source hardware.
In academia, where robotics researchers look to open so...
Long view required to keep economic policy in step with developments in robotics
Frank Tobe
16 Jul 2013
Policy is really about long-term thinking — a process we should do but don't do for various reasons. Though China is a notable exception, very few governments make long-term planning a priority.
...
What do policy-makers need to do to keep pace with economic development in robotics?
RBI Editors
15 Jul 2013
Economic policy may not jump to mind as a hot topic for roboticists, but it is a fundamental and influential driver behind the failure or success of the robotics community as a whole. After all, econo...
Frank Tobe on “What do policy-makers need to do to keep pace with economic development?”
RBI Editors and Frank Tobe
15 Jul 2013
[RBI Editors]
As an active robotics investor, a leading authority on the business of robotics, and the author of The Robot Report and Everything Robotic, you are at the pulse of the field's econ...
Frank Tobe on “What funding scheme is the most conducive to creating a robotics industry?”
Frank Tobe
15 Feb 2013
Funding new robotic projects in America is mostly done two different ways:
(1) strategic funding from NASA, DARPA, DoD, NSF and other government organizations to do the pure science involved in sol...
Frank Tobe on “If you had a EUR 100M investment fund, into which robotics technology or field of robotics would you put your money?”
Frank Tobe
15 Jan 2013
As the robotics industry continues to grow, enters new industries, and provides new applications, strategic focus is necessary or the overall industry will develop haphazardly and spread out around th...
The Robot Report startup map
Andra Keay
07 Jul 2012
Frank Tobe’s ‘The Robot Report’ has just launched a great map of global robot startups and he’d like your robot startup information…
Please add to our list of global robotic start-up compan...
