Robotics

Bay Area/Colombia-based delivery robotics firm Kiwibot this week announced that it has acquired Auto Mobility Solutions. The Taipei firm produces chips specifically for the world of robotics and autonomous driving. Details of the transaction have not been disclosed. Kiwi founder and CEO Felipe Chá

Robots made their stage debut the day after New Year's 1921. More than half-a-century before the world caught its first glimpse of George Lucas' droids, a small army of silvery humanoids took to the stages of the First Czechoslovak Republic. They were, for all intents and purposes, humanoid

Agricultural robotics are not a new phenomenon. We've seen systems that pick apples and berries, kill weeds, plant trees, transport produce and more. But while these functions are understood to be the core features of automated systems, the same thing is true here as it is across technology: It

The snake robot form factor has existed for decades. In addition to the diversity it adds to the world of automation, the design has several pragmatic attributes. The first is redundancy, which allows for the system to keep chugging even after a module is damaged. The second is a body that makes it

The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) this week announced the launch of the similarly named Open Source Robotics Alliance (OSRA). The new initiative is designed to maintain development for and maintenance of open source robotics projects, with a particular focus on the OSRF's own robot ope

It's tough to argue with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang when he notes, “Building foundation models for general humanoid robots is one of the most exciting problems to solve in AI today.” The humanoid form factor is one of the most hotly contested topics in the world of robotics at the moment, rais

It’s extremely heartening to see our little list effectively double since the last time we did one of these. While it’s true that layoffs continue to plague the tech industry at large, there are few better fields to be expert in at the moment than Robotics and AI. With more than 60 entr

Wander the Modex floor long enough and you'll stumble upon some wearable robotics. The category has nowhere near the presence of AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) or storage and retrieval systems, but exosuits are increasing in acceptance for their ability to eliminate the repetitive stress that

LG Electronics may no longer be a household name in smartphones, but it still sees a big future in gadgets like robots. Today, the company confirmed a $60 million investment in Bear Robotics, the California startup that makes artificial intelligence–powered server robots (autonomous tray towers o

It was a rough week. There are rarely good weeks for my industry, but this one felt especially dire. Perhaps because it hit close to home. Not that many publications, however, have been through the scale of what iRobot is facing. After a year-and-a-half of waiting, Amazon dropped its bid to purchas

In the past several years, the kitchen has increasingly become a focal point for the world of automation. Miso, for instance, has made a name for itself with Flippy, a hamburger cooking arm that has found its way into chain restaurants like White Castle. Others, including Zume Robotics, have been l

Aniai, a startup that has built a burger-grilling robot, Alpha Grill, said today it has raised $12 million, bringing its total raise to $15 million. The money will go toward launching its first manufacturing facility, Factory One, in South Korea. The firm will also be deploying a cloud-based AI sof

Figure today announced a “commercial agreement” that will bring its first humanoid robot to a BMW manufacturing facility in South Carolina. The Spartanburg plant is BMW's only in the United States. As of 2019, the 8 million-square-foot campus boasted the highest yield among the Germ

Bad news if you want to move to the moon or Mars: housing is a little hard to come by. Fortunately, NASA (as always) is thinking ahead, and has just shown off a self-assembling robotic structure that might just be a crucial part of moving off-planet. Published today in Science Robotics, the paper f