Robotics News | TechCrunch

Robust AI’s Carter Pro robot is designed to work with, and be moved by, humans

Brian Heater — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Two things are immediately notable when watching the Carter Pro robot navigate the aisles of the demo warehouse inside Robust AI’s San Carlos, California, headquarters. The first is the shelving units: standardized, modular, and off-the-shelf. The wire frames will look familiar to anyone who has spent time in warehouses, and that’s certainly by design. The second […]

Botinkit’s robot wants to cook for you

Brian Heater — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 17:00:00 +0000

Warehouses aren’t the only places grappling with a labor crunch. Since the start of the pandemic, restaurants around the world have been grappling with staffing shortages. A number of startups have entered the picture with automation solutions, aimed at reducing the number of hands required to keep the lights on and the food warm. There […]

Drone manufacturer Skydio raises $170 million extension round

Margaux MacColl, Sean O'Kane — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 18:05:31 +0000

American drone manufacturer Skydio has raised an extension round of $170 million, adding onto the $230 million Series E it closed early last year.

Wing begins delivering blood samples via drone in London

Brian Heater — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 19:26:23 +0000

Alphabet X spinoff Wing on Wednesday confirmed that it has started delivering blood samples via drone. The program, announced in September, is shuttling samples between London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals. Wing is running up to 10 deliveries a day, Monday through Friday. Each run can contain several different samples and takes around three minutes. […]

Ever wanted to rent a food delivery robot? Now you can.

Brian Heater — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 17:32:02 +0000

Good news for anyone who’s ever wanted to rent a delivery robot. Kiwibot this week announced a new “rent a robot” offering, making it possible for companies to use its army of autonomous delivery systems for a finite amount of time. The robot-as-a-service (RaaS) approach follows the startup’s recent acquisition of advertising firm Nickelytics: Using […]

Vecna Robotics raises $14.5M and taps former Motional CEO to lead startup

Kirsten Korosec — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:59:13 +0000

Karl Iagnemma, an early pioneer in the autonomous vehicle industry who recently stepped down as president and CEO from Hyundai-backed Motional, is back in the AV and robotics game. Vecna Robotics, a Massachusetts-based startup that uses robots to handle materials in warehouses, has hired Iagnemma as CEO. The robotics startup, which has developed autonomous pallet […]

Now anyone in LA can hail a Waymo robotaxi

Kirsten Korosec — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 16:00:15 +0000

Waymo has opened its robotaxi service to everyone in Los Angeles, sunsetting a waitlist that had grown to 300,000 people. The Alphabet-backed company said starting Tuesday anyone can download the Waymo One app to hail a ride in its service area, which is now about 80 square miles in Los Angeles County. Waymo has had […]

These 60 robotics companies are hiring

Brian Heater — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 15:40:13 +0000

From the looks of things, companies in the category — including Agility Robotics and Formlogic — can’t hire quickly enough.

Ulysses is using robots to restore seagrass populations

Rebecca Szkutak — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 14:01:54 +0000

Seagrass punches above its weight. The marine plant only occupies 0.1% of the ocean floor but can be credited with supporting marine ecosystems of plants and fish, filtering ocean water, and capturing quite a bit of carbon. Seagrass is also being destroyed, due to climate change and other factors, with meadows reducing 7% globally each […]

iRobot lays off another 105 employees

Aisha Malik — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 22:21:23 +0000

Roomba maker iRobot is laying off 105 employees — about 16% of the company’s workforce, per an SEC filing — saying the cuts are part of an “operational restructuring plan.” The move comes after iRobot slashed roughly 350 jobs — about 31% of its workforce — earlier this year. Those cuts were made after plans […]

Meta’s former hardware lead for Orion is joining OpenAI

Maxwell Zeff — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:30:47 +0000

The former head of Meta’s augmented reality glasses efforts announced on Monday she is joining OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware, according to a post on LinkedIn. OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch that Caitlin Kalinowski will be joining the startup. Kalinowski is a hardware executive who began leading Meta’s AR glasses team in March 2022. […]

Built in four days, this $120 robot arm cleans a spill with help from GPT-4o

Brian Heater — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 16:36:32 +0000

Large language models have already proven transformative for robotics. While researchers and companies alike utilize the platforms to supercharge robotic learning, a pair of roboticists at UC Berkeley and ETH Zurich challenged themselves by leveraging generative AI to put a cheap robot arm to work. Jannik Grothusen and Kaspar Janssen trained a pair of $120 […]

MIT debuts a large language model-inspired method for teaching robots new skills

Brian Heater — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 16:00:00 +0000

MIT this week showcased a new model for training robots. Rather than the standard set of focused data used to teach robots new tasks, the method goes big, mimicking the massive troves of information used to train large language models (LLMs). The researchers note that imitation learning — in which the agent learns by following […]

Boston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid hot dogs for the camera

Brian Heater — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 14:55:04 +0000

Automation skeptics ask: Why humanoids? There are many benefits and drawbacks of the robotics form factor, but Boston Dynamics’ latest electric Atlas video showcases one of the most underdiscussed factors: costumes. “Why build a humanoid robot?” the company rhetorically posits. “Because the world is designed for humans, including all the best Halloween costumes.” A day […]

Boston Dynamics’ electric Atlas humanoid executes autonomous automotive parts picking

Brian Heater — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 14:43:23 +0000

Boston Dynamics’ new humanoid has been quietly improving by leaps and bounds behind the scenes. Announced in April, we caught some brief insight into the electric Atlas’ strength in August through a video of the robot doing pushups. The latest video, released Wednesday, showcases the robot doing work in a demo space, moving engine parts […]

MDC is building a surgical robot that operates inside an MRI

Brian Heater — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 22:13:23 +0000

MRIs are an indispensable tool for surgeons, though the technology certainly has its limitations. Take, for instance, surgeons using the machines to guide their procedures. The current process entails putting the patient into a machine to get an image, before pulling them out to advance a needle one centimeter at a time. It’s a time-consuming […]

2024 Startup Battlefield Top 20 Finalists: MDC

Yashad Kulkarni — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 21:00:00 +0000

Revolutionizing surgery with a novel robotic system that provides physicians direct access inside MRI scanners. Subscribe for more on YouTube: https://tcrn.ch/youtube Follow TechCrunch on Instagram: http://tcrn.ch/instagram TikTok: https://tcrn.ch/tiktok X: tcrn.ch/x Threads: https://tcrn.ch/threads Facebook: https://tcrn.ch/facebook Bluesky: https://tcrn.ch/bluesky Mastodon: https://tcrn.ch/mstdn Read more: https://techcrunch.com/

This robot showcases ‘exceptional dexterity’ as it loads a dishwasher

Cody Corrall — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 15:00:00 +0000

NeoDavid has changed a lot in the last 14 years. A new video of the humanoid robot from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics showcases its “exceptional dexterity.” NeoDavid’s finger joints can be controlled individually, which allows the robot to be seen loading and unloading a dishwasher as well […]

Airdog’s founders are back with a precision-strike drone meant for modern warfare

Mike Butcher — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 09:52:15 +0000

The war in Ukraine has shown that warfare changes by the day. It’s also clear that the tech used to make war today is costly: While larger countries can afford legions of tanks, helicopters, and precision-strike systems, smaller nations find themselves scrambling for cheaper ways to defend themselves. Origin, a new defense tech startup out of […]

DJI sues Department of Defense over listing as a Chinese military company

Anthony Ha — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 20:50:46 +0000

Drone-maker DJI filed a lawsuit Friday against the U.S. Department of Defense over its inclusion on a DoD list of “Chinese military companies.” A DJI spokesperson said the company filed the suit after “attempting to engage with the DoD for more than sixteen months” and deciding “it had no alternative other than to seek relief […]