Hardware

“Jidoka” is a new one to me. TRI (Toyota Research Institute) CEO Gill Pratt described the concept as “Automation with a Human Touch.” The anglicized version of the notion is “Autonomation” — both are modified forms of “ automation,” in their respective languages. T

Africa's smartphone market shrunk by 18% in 2022 compared to the previous year, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). The slump was driven by a reduction in consumer spending due to inflation, and economic uncertainties, but it was not unique to Africa as smartphone shipment di

Ingestible robotics has been a fascinating and growing field for the last several years. We've already seen a handful of startups working to commercialize a technology that could allow for internal monitoring, medicine delivery and more, without the need for invasive procedure. This new project

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch5 will now offer improved period tracking features thanks to a new partnership with Natural Cycles that leverages the smartwatch’s temperature sensors to make better predictions. The launch follows last fall’s announcement of a new temperature sensor on the

I'm not sure how high up size is on the VR scene's current list of complaints. Truth is, there are still a lot of things standing between the technology and mainstream acceptance. Still, massive, bulky headsets are a thing worth discussing. Back at CES, I tried HTC’s Vive XR Elite, wh

Xiaomi — the company that originally made its name as “the Apple of China” — broke out of its home market and became a household name in India shortly after its debut in 2014. Its initial, rapid success was with phones, but that gave the Chinese company the velocity to take on other

Samsung is the best at big. Big, brash, bold, kitchen sink phones. The company that mainstreamed the phablet a dozen years ago has never given up on big dreams about big phones. Last year, the company took a risk — sunsetting the beloved Note line. While I stand by my initial assessment that

The age-old question in my industry is, “Where are we in a given hype cycle?” For now, crypto news cycle dominance has, thankfully, died now, largely through its own self-destructive tendencies. FTX obviously served as the most prominent recent example of what happens when the tech comm

It’s a couple of years since DJI first launched its Mavic Mini, and last year it brought the Mini 3 Pro. It’s utterly confusing why the current drone is called the Mini 2 SE, but in any case, it’s the newest flying creature in the hovering menagerie that is the DJI lineup. The dro

Super Bowl ads make strange bedfellows. Half a week out from The Big Game™, Google just dropped their spot. This time out, the company's Pixel 7 is in the spotlight — specifically the smartphone's impressive AI imaging features. Legally, one can't have a Super Bowl spot without enli

Last year, Apple introduced the new Pro version of its AirPods lineup, Samsung upgraded its Pro buds and Google launched the first Pixel Buds Pro. Now it’s OnePlus’ turn with the Buds Pro 2 — priced at $179. Launching along with the OnePlus 11 flagship, the Buds Pro 2 brings improved

Apple’s M series chips were incredibly well telegraphed when they arrived in late 2020. Apple had been designing its own silicon since the A4 appeared in the iPhone 4 just over a decade earlier. The appearance of Apple's in-house efforts in the Mac was really just a question of when, not

One could make a very reasonable argument that FRIDA (Framework and Robotics Initiative for Developing Arts) is as much a thought experiment as it is a research project. Certainly it butts up against similar questions around art and creativity as AI projects like DALL-E and ChatGPT — though t

Here's an interesting comment from MIT's Alfonso Parra Rubio, “Treating soft versus hard robotics is a false dichotomy.” For, I suppose, obvious reasons, thinking around technology tends to be a bit…binary. Certainly we've traditionally regarded soft robots as being something that