The composites industry has been growing at CAGR of 11.1% over the last 10 years. Given the soft economy, this is truly standout performance. The largest markets for composites have been aerospace and military requirements. Last year’s estimate of shipments in these categories alone was 21.3 million pounds of finished parts. This isn’t counting the […]
Facebook plans to offer Internet service using aerial robots
UPDATE: 03/29/2014 The headline remains the same but the players have changed. Instead of Titan Aerospace being acquired for $60 million, Facebook chose to acquire a small UK start-up with great talent, Ascenta, for $20 million. TechCrunch first revealed that Facebook was in talks to acquire or partner with Titan Aerospace. Titan makes solar-powered aerial robots that…
April is a busy month for robotic events
US National Robotics Week, with almost 100 events around the country, the AIA Vision Show and the FIRST Robotics Championship headline April's robotic events. In addition to those major events there's also a We Robot legal and policy issues conference, an Xconomy Forum, an RIA Collaborative Robots workshop and a 1-day Robots: From Imagination to Market presentation. All…
Au revoir, French entrepreneurs – except for a bastion of robotics innovators in Lyon
In a serious critique of French business practices, the International New York Times wrote about a brain drain from France – a migration of aspiring entrepreneurs feeling that they have to leave France to have a chance to get their ideas off the ground and into the marketplace. The Telegraph, from which this cartoon came, had…
FIA Formula E Racing
Is it a radical break with the past, or the studied creation of a new racing tradition that builds on the classic principles that bring cars and technology together. Either way it is going to result in great demonstrations of mechatronic engineering, vehicle design and serious racing performance. The FIA announced a new class of […]
ROV operations expenditures to grow to $1.5 billion by 2017
Douglas-Westwood, an energy research group, says (in their $5,000 World ROV Operations Market Forecast 2013-2017 report), that ROV operations expenditures will grow 80% over the next 5 years. 75% of the ROV vehicles are used as work-class vehicles; the remainder are for inspection. The combined purchase and operations expenditures over those years will be $9.7 billion.…
Are telepresence robots robots? Part II
With an attention-grabbing headline last week on Robohub, Edward Snowden BEAMed into a TED Talk. With much less fanfare, this writer participated in a panel in Lyon, France while I was in Stuttgart, Germany, also using a BEAM. But are BEAMs robots? The international standards group suggests that robots must sense, process that data and…
How quickly things change
At previous MODEX's, where they exhibit the latest manufacturing and supply chain equipment and technologies, Kiva had their own booth. Big booths with lots of people marveling at their orange robots. Today at MODEX, those orange robots were moving to a different drummer. Amazon was marketing their full-service distribution service – and also doing some recruiting.…
Electric Car Competitions
The mainstream automobile racing community, in spite of the assumed goal of pushing the limits of technology, has been slow to engage really new technology. One would think that with all the remarkable electric cars that have recently come to market that an electric entry would make sense. The motorcycle guys have shown incredible achievements […]
Rehab robots, smart prostheses and exoskeletons to reach $1.8 billion by 2020
A Wintergreen Research report says that the rehabilitation robot market will grow from $43.3 million to $1.8 billion by 2020 as a result of the effectiveness of robotic treatment methods. The $3,900 report covers the breath of the work being done in this important healthcare robotics segment. It covers products such as rehab/therapy robots, active prostheses,…
WAGO to sponsor FIRST Robotics Competition for students
Combining the excitement of sport with the rigors of science and technology, FIRST Robotics Com-petition (FRC) challenges students to build and program robots to perform tasks and compete with their peers. High school students have the opportunity to learn from professional engineers, build their own robots, learn sophisticated software and hardware, participate in alliances and […]
Are telepresence robots robots?
Is the da Vinci robotic surgical system robotic? Is a car with adaptive cruise control acting robotically? Well… no to all three questions. All three are borderline cases and examples of robotics in a transition state and being affected by two converging robotics-related trends: Toward more capable and lower-cost robots, and Towards physically-responsive smart devices. These and…
Chess, Jeopardy and now… Ping Pong?
UPDATE 03/12/14: Timo Boll wins table tennis match with KUKA Agilus robot. Two new videos to watch: one summarizing the match and the other about how and why the videos were made. The promo video was pretty cool and over 1MM viewers watched it. The match video is also interesting and worth watching – particularly…
MPG and What’s Really Important
How we spend our money on transportation is a big part of the economy. The purchase of an automobile is the second largest expenditure after a home. There are lots of options and because cars are expensive, we tend to weigh the options carefully. Fuel cost is the most obvious single cost related to the […]
MPG or MPGe?
The familiar MPG, miles per gallon, is a very sensitive subject. The number of miles per gallon that you get from a car predicts how much money you will need to spend on gasoline. In an era where the electric vehicle is becoming established as an alternative, the way we come up with the numbers […]
American nuclear materials storage site guarded by robots
UPDATE 03/12/2014: Russia announced that it was planning to deploy mobile security robotics later this year to protect its strategic missile facilities. Since 2011, a Nevada nuclear materials storage site has been guarded by MDARS robots (Mobile Detection, Assessment and Response System). Last week the US Marines announced that their airbase in Twentynine Palms will…
Proletarian Robots Getting Cheaper to Exploit
by Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report After laughing uncomfortably at the headline from The Moscow Times reporting about the recent Skolkovo Robot Conference, I parsed through the wording and found the intended meaning. But that process: from shock and incongruity, to amusement, through multiple second thoughts and a bit of research, to an…
Proletarian Robots Getting Cheaper to Exploit
After laughing uncomfortably at the headline from The Moscow Times reporting about the recent Skolkovo Robot Conference, I parsed through the wording and found the intended meaning. But that process: from shock and incongruity, to amusement, through multiple second thoughts and a bit of research, to an understanding of the headline, is the same process…
With 11,000 pre-orders, Play-i gets $8 million Series A
It was just a few months ago that Play-i raised over $1.4 million on Kickstarter. With a heavy advertising buy during the holiday season they now have 11,000 pre-orders for their Bo and Yana robotic toy. Today they announced a Series A financing of $8 million. In the announcement about the funding they announced partnerships with…
Mazor Robotics is gaining momentum
Mazor Robotics, producer of the Renaissance Guidance System for spine and neuro surgeries, reported favorable earnings for the 4th quarter and for the whole year of 2013. 4Q revenue was up 111% over 2012 and the full year was up 64%. Nevertheless, the company’s net loss for 2013 was $20.5 million, $13.4 million of which…