Robotics

Last fall, Alex and I discussed bringing back the TC+ robotics survey. I gave him the usual caveat: I'm into it, but it will have to wait until I can find the time. You know how these things go — you wake up one morning and somehow it's five months later. I've got excuses if you need

If I'm an investor hoping to determine where robotics goes next after logistics, I'm looking at three key categories: construction, healthcare and agriculture. All are still in their relative infancy and poised for (in my humble opinion) some explosive growth. Agtech robotics is going to be

Last-mile robotics startup Neubility — which makes autonomous delivery robots that work without lidar — says that it plans bump its fleet up to 400  by the end of this year, up from the 50 it currently has in circulation. The goal is part of an ambitious plan that the Seoul-based start

Robots have conquered ProMat. The supply chain and logistics show is a kind of perfect microcosm of where the industry is heading. Many of the show's main attractions have moved from center stage to the physical margins of the show floor, while competitors like 6 River Systems and Locus grab th

If you'd told me five years ago that I would be flying to Chicago in March to attend a supply chain and logistics show, you would have been greeted by a momentary blank stare, followed by the image of a man attempting to determine in real time where his life went off-track. This is absolutely n

At first glance, Boston Dynamics is a strange fit for a show like ProMat. For decades, the firm has presented a flashy image to the world — a company well known for robotic highlight reels, from the snow-traversing Big Dog to parkour-performing Atlas. But a recent approach has found it facing

When Masaya Aso worked on autonomous driving technology at Bosch in Japan and Germany, he realized that “many tasks were still manual as over 85% of warehouses have almost no automation at all.”  To help address the problem, Aso co-founded LexxPluss, a now two-year-old, Japan-based sta

“I think I’m probably just as guilty as everybody else,” Toyota Research Institute’s (TRI) senior vice president of robotics, Max Bajracharya, admits. “It's like, now our GPUs are better. Oh, we got machine learning and now you know we can do this. Oh, okay, maybe that was har

A lot has happened in the half-year since we caught up with Ayanna Howard, dean of the Ohio State University's College of Engineering — not all of it good. The broader economic slowdown has been deeply felt by the robotics industry, across the board, from the smallest startups to the biggest

Boston Dynamics just released the latest demo of its humanoid robot, Atlas. The robot could already run and jump over complex terrain thanks to its feet. Now, the robot has hands, per se. These rudimentary grippers give the robot new life. Suddenly, instead of being an agile pack mule, the Atlas b

It's a new year, but the industry's struggles are showing no signs of abating. Big firms are as susceptible — if not more so. This week, Alphabet joined the growing list of tech giants making staff cuts amid ongoing economic struggles. Following a wave of layoffs from the likes of Ama

Simulators have been a godsend when it comes to testing robots. Real-world testing is lengthy, expensive and potentially dangerous, so anything you can do to work out as many kinks as possible ahead of time is a big win. Isaac Sim has thus far proven a success for Nvidia, as the chipmaker has looke

Big thanks to Joyce Sidopoulos, Peter Barrett and Ken Goldberg for filling in the last few weeks. I'm excited by the boost this newsletter has been getting in recent months and wanted to keep the light on while I was out. Three weeks is the longest break I've taken for work in…ever, reall