The Robot Report

The ringing of the closing bell today at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was performed by a UR5e cobot from Universal Robots (UR). The UR5e, equipped with a Robotiq gripper, became the first cobot to ring the closing bell. On Feb. 6, 2018, Bina48, a robot developed by Hanson Robotics, was involved (see video…

The image recognition technology that underlies today’s autonomous cars and aerial drones depends on artificial intelligence: the computers essentially teach themselves to recognize objects like a dog, a pedestrian crossing the street or a stopped car. The problem is that the computers running the artificial intelligence algorithms are currently too large and slow for future…

South African agtech company Aerobotics has closed a $2 million Series A. The data analytics company uses drones and machine learning algorithms to help farmers identify pest and disease early. After receiving $602,000 in seed funding last August, Aerobotics has added new investors to continue its growth. Leading the pack is the VC branch of one of…

Data is the key to developing reliable self-driving cars. But it’s about having the right data, not necessarily the most data. And nuTonomy, a Boston-based self-driving vehicle company recently purchased by Delphi for $450 million, believes it has the right data to allow researchers across the world to develop safe autonomous vehicles. nuTonomy released a self-driving dataset called…

Under Bill Gates’ leadership in the early 2000s, Microsoft was gung-ho about robotics. Gates predicted in 2007 that robotics would be the next hot field. He had a vision of a robot in every home. Unfortunately, the company’s robotics wheels fell off after Gates left Microsoft in 2008. But it appears Microsoft is looking to…