Industrial robot sales for 2015 set new record, despite troubles in China

Worldwide sales of industrial robots set a new record: 248,000 units sold in 2015, 12% more than 2014. 66,700 units sold in China of which 20,400 were made in China. Asia is still the strongest gr...

22 June 2016, by Frank Tobe

Chinese investors keep buying international robotics companies

The latest acquisition is Gimatic, an Italian pneumatic and electric grippers, sensors and positioners maker, by Agic Capital. The Financial Times reported the sale price to be between $112 and $16...

13 June 2016, by Frank Tobe

May fundings, acquisitions and IPOs

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...

01 June 2016, by Frank Tobe

EU’s Horizon 2020 has funded $179 million in robotics PPPs

Over the past two years, research in 5G and robotics PPP projects have received the highest funding awards within Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation program....

25 May 2016, by Frank Tobe

Paradigm shift: from Siri to Viv

Artificial intelligence that programs itself on the fly - from the team that developed Siri at SRI and Apple - was demonstrated this week in New York and it quickly performed complex spoken tasks, liv...

12 May 2016, by Frank Tobe

March fundings, acquisitions, IPOs and failures

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...

04 April 2016, by Frank Tobe

3D Robotics undergoing layoffs and other challenges

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 ...

29 March 2016, by Frank Tobe

Harvest Automation stumbles with warehouse robot

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...

19 March 2016, by Frank Tobe

The Robot Report startup map

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...

07 July 2012, by Andra Keay

The Robot Report