In July, the Parrot Group partnered with senseFly, a Swiss start-up and spin-off from the Swiss EPFL, and invested $5.3 million to help senseFly grow. Their initial plan was to develop a high volume manufacturing capability and fund rapid growth and new product development. The eBee is the first such product from that venture. The…

They can’t build the machines fast enough to satisfy the demand, particularly from Italian end-users. A1 Concepts Let’s Pizza machines are in Europe and soon will be coming to the US. The devices don’t just reheat frozen pizzas; they create an authentic 10.5″ pizza, made from scratch with fresh ingredients in less than 2-1/2 minutes.…

Distribution centers (DCs) are massive warehouses that receive, inspect and store goods for later picking, packing and shipping to end-users, re-distributors or retail outlets. Products can be everything from books, pharmacy goods, clothing, office goods, food, drinks, shoes, produce, household items and pet supplies to diapers. And quantities can be one or two individual units…

By Frank Tobe, editor/publisher, The Robot Report Yesterday was the launch of Rethink Robotics’ Baxter shop assistant robot. Many reporters, including myself, saw Baxter at Rethink’s headquarters in Boston in the past two months but were embargoed from writing about it until today, the launch date. Looking at the stories – as they appear all…

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report My friends have been kidding me for months about the movie Robot & Frank (because my name is Frank, I’ve got gray hair, and I’m way into robots — I research, edit and publish The Robot Report and this blog). I have a Photoshop’d poster with…

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report Max Nisen of Business Insider wrote recently of a list of seven stock picks discovered in a Credit Suisse report on long term trends. One of those trends was increasing global automation (particularly in China) and the seven picks relate to companies poised to benefit from…

By Babs Carryer, Adjunct Prof, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Advisor, Carnegie Mellon University, Editor and Author, New Venturist** Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report Sometimes a company is founded because it stumbles upon a niche that it can fill better than any other company. Such a company is RE2 (Robotics Engineering Excellence). Founded by…

By Frank Tobe, Editor/Publisher, The Robot Report The business of unmanned aerial, underwater and ground vehicles — originally funded by DARPA, NSF and other government-sponsored research programs — and the many ancillary businesses involved — has grown quickly and dramatically. Lobbying for its interests has been well-funded by defense contractors and very successful in advancing the defense…

By Frank Tobe, Editor/Publisher, The Robot Report Click to enlarge and see details. This mash-up of our list of 159 robotic start-up companies onto Google’s global map graphically displays how widespread robotic inventions and inventors are dispersed around the world and particularly around major robotic research centers. For the purpose of this mash-up, we are…

By Frank Tobe, Editor/Publisher, The Robot Report The Georgia Institute of Technology lays on a beautiful 400 acre campus and is a university committed to improving the human condition through advanced science and technology. It also has campuses in France, Singapore, Shanghai, Peking, Costa Rica and Ireland. With a US faculty of 1,100, a support staff of…

 By Frank Tobe, editor/publisher, The Robot Report Last week I attended the 7th Annual Remote Presence Clinical Innovations Forum hosted by InTouch Health in Santa Barbara, CA, a two-day users conference disseminating the latest information regarding a wide range of telemedicine-related topics through presentations and workshops. The keynote address, by Yulun Wang, Chairman and CEO of…

By Frank Tobe, Editor/Publisher, The Robot Report Normally I don’t write about scientific breakthroughs that may or may not turn into commercial products. But these two are sure winners and I wanted to share them with you. Headlights That See Through Rain Graphic courtesy of Carnegie Mellon Illumination and Imaging Lab. A while back the…

A version of this post originally appeared on Singularity Hub, June 6, 2012. By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher The Robot Report Robot manufacturers are beginning to shift theirattention from industrial to service robots. The robotics industry is on the cusp of a major transformation. Today’s factory robots are solitary precision instruments, mimicking the repertoire…

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher The Robot ReportA copy of this article also appeared on RoboticsTomorrow.com,IT Business Net, A New Domain Net and ECN Magazine.  “Pure play” is an investment term that refers to a company which is exclusively focused on a particular product or service. An investor buys stock in pure play companies…

A version of this post originally appeared on Automaton, IEEE Spectrum’s robotics blog. By Frank Tobe, editor/publisher, The Robot Report What’s the best approach to building commercially successful robotics companies? Here are two arguments from two prominent people in the robotics industry: Identify a need that can be filled with a robotic solution in a large…

By Frank Tobe, editor/publisher, The Robot Report Travis Deyle, is a postdoc researcher at Duke and a recent PhD from GA Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering where he was a member of the Healthcare Robotics Lab and a frequent blogger at Hizook.com. Fortunate for us, he kept a file of 2011 venture funded robotic…

By Frank Tobe, editor/publisher, The Robot Report Pres. Obama, speaking at Carnegie Mellon University, June 24, 2011 “Today, I’m calling for all of us to come together- private sector, industry, universities, and the government – to spark a renaissance in American manufacturing and help our manufacturers develop the cutting-edge tools they need to compete with…

Copied with permission from New Venturist.Written by Babs Carryer, serial entrepreneur and Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at CMU. Seema never had any plans to go into business and never in a million years thought she’d start a company. But the opportunity fell into her lap and she couldn’t resist taking the plunge. Seema was always…

In the emerging world of service robotics, many markets are opening to robotics that were once only handled by industrial robot manufacturers. Safely unmanned, or working alongside human workers, in a show focused on handling materials in the factory and also in the warehouse, Modex 2012, held in Atlanta (after 16 years in Cleveland), displayed the wares…

China’s economic miracle has lifted countless millions of supremely poor people out of poverty. But this progress has come at a price. The Apple Corporation’s experience in manufacturing its popular iPhones, iPods and iPads in China – recently described in the N.Y. Times – has subjected many of those making Apple products to unsafe and…

Click image to enlarge The latest ROBO-STOX™ chart – covering the four year period from 12/31/2007 to 12/31/2011 – shows that worldwide stock performance of robotic stocks over the last four years has been disappointing for investors. Robotic industrials are still down 28% from their 2007 highs and did poorer than the Dow Jones Industrial…

Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft and Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman, Mercedes Benz Much of what I saw at CES 2012 was about products being upgraded to “smart” under the premise that smart connectivity enables consumer convenience. It was definitely on the minds of most of those attending. That’s why the CES keynote speeches were so well attended:…