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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....
Japan’s Haneda Airport to deploy 3 types of robots from Cyberdyne
Frank Tobe
13 Jul 2015
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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....
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....
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....
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...
Chinese shopping for global robotics ventures
Frank Tobe
30 Apr 2015
April has seen Chinese VCs acquiring robotic ventures, buying out competitors, seeking funding to scale up production, and shoring up industry gaps....
Commercial drone market projected to grow 109% CAGR
Frank Tobe
27 Apr 2015
Markets and Markets, a Dallas, TX research firm, in an 189-page $4,650 report, is projecting that the global commercial drones market will grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 109.3% and ...
Sino-Russian robotics boosted as Skolkovo signs $200M deal with Chinese investment fund
Hallie Siegel
22 Apr 2015
Russia's Skolkovo Foundation and the Chinese Cybernaut Investment Group signed an agreement yesterday in Beijing to create a joint Russian-Chinese business incubator, a robotics accelerator program, ...
Parrot grows both consumer and commercial drone business
Frank Tobe
10 Apr 2015
Previously known for consumer products for smartphones, tablets and cars, Paris-based Parrot recently branched into both the consumer and commercial drone businesses....
Domino’s April Fools Day spoof not so far-fetched
Frank Tobe
08 Apr 2015
"Domino's rolls out driverless delivery vehicles" blared the headline on the Dominos UK website on April Fools Day. They even provided a short video clip of the phony vehicle delivering pizz...
March money flow recap
Frank Tobe
06 Apr 2015
The first three months of 2015 are doing quite well for robotics-related companies. March fundings and acquisitions to CyPhy Works, Hansen Medical, Clearpath Robotics, DroneDeploy, JR Automation and L...
Hansen Medical gets $35M; Clearpath Robotics $11.2M
Frank Tobe
21 Mar 2015
Two robotics-related companies just got funding. Hansen Medical sold 53,846 shares to get $35M; and Clearpath Robotics got $11.2M for an unusual reason....
FAA exemption permits drones for oil and gas inspections
Frank Tobe
17 Mar 2015
Sky-Futures, a UK-based company offering drone inspection services to the global oil and gas industry, through their Houston office, was awarded an FAA exemption allowing their drones to fly in US air...
Takeoff in robotics will power the next productivity surge in manufacturing
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
05 Mar 2015
BCG research predicts that by 2025, adoption of advanced robots will boost productivity by up to 30 percent in many industries, and lower total labor costs by 18 percent or more in countries such as S...
EG Robotics: Building a robotics ecosystem in Egypt
Mahmoud AbdelAziz
03 Mar 2015
Expanding into emerging markets brings with it a specific set of challenges for designing products and services. Not only do cultural differences play a role in what, how, and why customers behave the...
3D Robotics gets $50M series C funding
Frank Tobe
28 Feb 2015
The $50 million Series C funding, mainly from Qualcomm, provides the basis for a tacit partnership between Qualcomm and 3D Robotics with a goal of leveraging the pace of innovation in the smartphone i...
Foxconn begins selling noodle-making robot
Frank Tobe
28 Feb 2015
Early in 2014 Foxconn invested $25 million in Fu Jiang Robot Technology, a Shenzhen robot maker which had a dough-slicing device that was beginning to sell....
UPDATE Pepper delayed until summer; Aldebaran execs Maisonnier and Baillie leave
Frank Tobe
23 Feb 2015
UPDATED 2/23/15 Softbank announced a delay in sales of their Pepper robot from February until sometime during the summer. Aldebaran announced that CEO and Founder Bruno Maisonnier and Jean-Christop...
Bruno Maisonnier moves on from Aldebaran
Andra Keay
23 Feb 2015
Farewell and thank you to Bruno Maisonnier, the founder and CEO of Aldebaran Robotics, which is now 95% owned by Softbank. Softbank had previously acquired a majority stake in the ground breaking Fr...
