26 different startups were funded to the tune of $507 million in September, up from $369 million in August. Six acquisitions were reported during the month including Deere’s acquisition of California Blue River Technology for $305 million. And Restoration Robotics’ IPO will start being listed on NASDAQ early in October.
Global robot growth causing shortages in critical components
At a cocktail party hosted by Harmonic Drive Systems at the annual RoboBusiness conference and expo held September 27-28 in Santa Clara, CA, CEOs from Harmonic Drive US and Japan gave short speeches about Harmonic and their 4X expansion program to handle increasing global demand for Harmonic Drive gears and other critical components involved in the manufacture…
Disney robots create memorable experiences
In a keynote speech at the annual RoboBusiness conference and expo held September 27-28 in Santa Clara, CA, Martin Buehler, Executive R&D Imagineer at Walt Disney Imagineering, described the core criteria for robotics at Disney: safety, reliability, and the means to communicate a story that creates a memorable experience for the visitor. Storytelling is what makes…
iRobot on the defensive
SharkNinja, a well-known marketer of home consumer products, has entered the American robotic vacuum market with a product that is priced to compete against iRobot’s Roomba line of floor cleaners. Their new ION Robot navigates floors and carpets and docks and recharges automatically. It sells at a very favorable price point to iRobot’s.
Blue River Technology sells to Deere for $305 million
Blue River Technology has been acquired by John Deere* for $305 million. The acquisition of the Silicon Valley artificial intelligence and farm equipment making startup by farming’s largest equipment manufacturer (Deere), is a great success story with a bit of a twist.
United Technologies acquires Rockwell Collins for $30 billion
Aerospace conglomerate United Technologies is paying $30 billion to acquire Rockwell Collins in a deal that creates one of the world’s largest makers of civilian and defense aircraft components. Rockwell Collins and United’s Aerospace Systems segment will combine to create a new business unit named Collins Aerospace Systems.
Asimov’s laws of A.I.
In an OpEd piece in the NY Times, and in a TED Talk late last year, Oren Etzioni, PhD, author, and CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, suggested an update for Isaac Asimov’s three laws of Artificial Intelligence. Given the widespread media attention emanating from Elon Musk’s (and others) warnings, these updates might be worth…
August 2017 fundings, acquisitions, IPOs and failures
August fundings totaled $369 million but the number of August transactions, seven, was down from previous months, eg: both July and June had 19 fundings each. Acquisitions, on the other hand, remained steady with a big one pending: Snap has been negotiating all month to acquire Chinese drone startup Zero Zero Robotics for around $150M.
Industrial robots in China up, up and away!
China has rapidly become a global leader in robotics and automation. 2016 annual sales of industrial robots reached the highest level ever for any single country: 87,000 units (up 27% from 2015) and China’s stock of industrial robots is now, at 340,000 units, also the highest total in the world. while Chinese robot manufacturers increased…
Quiet inroads in robotics: practical applications for service robots
The service robotics industry has been growing exponentially for the past 10 years and many are out in the field performing a wide and diverse range of useful tasks. Consider Savioke, Reis & Irvy, and ECOVACS. These three companies are providing unique, new uses for service robots and are indicative of the growth of service robotics in…
ROBO, the first Robotics and Automation ETF, hits $1 billion in AUM
[stock_market_widget type=”inline” symbol=”ROBO” template=”basic” color=”default” refresh_frequency=”0″] surpassed $1 billion in assets under management (AUM) less than 4 years from launch. The Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) tracks the ROBO Global Robotics & Automation Index, which is the brainchild of a team deeply entrenched in the robotics industry. The Index and subsequent ETF offer investors access to…
Sex robots: Facts, hype, and legal and ethical considerations
The world’s first robot brothel is in Barcelona; a sex doll maker is taking pre-orders for animatronic heads attached to sex-providing bodies; one maker is offering a resistant persona which ethicists are equating to rape mode. Lots of headlines and titillating photos. What is really going on? It’s true that sex robots will someday happen,…
The agricultural labor conundrum
Instead of worrying so much about robots taking away jobs, maybe we should worry more about wages being too low for robots to even get a chance. Seasonal labor for harvesting agricultural products, particularly fruits and vegetables, is dependent on human labor from a diminishing universe of willing workers. Robots that can supplement or replace human workers…
Auris Robotics raises another $280 million!
Auris Robotics, the Silicon Valley startup headed by Frederic Moll who previously co-founded Hansen Medical and Intuitive Surgical, raised $280 million in a Series D round led by Coatue Management and included earlier investors Mithril Capital Management, Lux Capital, Highland Capital and 24 others. An Auris Robotics spokesman said that the company has raised a total…
US Army and Navy ordered to halt use of DJI drones
The U.S. Army has ordered its members to stop using drones made by Chinese manufacturer SZ DJI Technology because of “cyber vulnerabilities.” The directive applies to all DJI drones and systems that use DJI components or software. It requires service members to “cease all use, uninstall all DJI applications, remove all batteries and storage media and secure equipment…
Amazon Picking Challenge winners half ready for deployment
In 2014, Amazon sponsored a contest to solve the warehouse order-fulfillment problem of picking a wide range of items from a shelf under uncertain conditions – a task that, in 2014, could only be done by human pickers and one that Amazon would like to automate to better fulfill their increasing load of e-commerce orders. Terms…
July 2017 fundings, acquisitions, IPOs and failures
July, 2017 was a big month for robotics-related company funding. Four raised more than $100 million and 15 others raised $271 million for a monthly total of $919 million. Acquisitions also continued to be significant with ST Engineering acquiring Aethon for $36 million, iRobot buying its European distributor for $141 million while SoftBank purchased 5% of iRobot…
China’s appetite now focused on artificial intelligence
China has recently announced their long-term goal to become #1 in A.I. by 2030. They plan to grow their A.I. industry to over $22 billion by 2020, $59 billion by 2025 and $150 billion by 2030. They did this same type of long-term strategic planning for robotics – to make it an in-country industry and to transform…
ST Engineering acquires mobile robot maker Aethon for $36 million
Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd (ST Engineering) has acquired Pittsburgh, PA-based robotics firm Aethon Inc through Vision Technologies Land Systems, Inc. (VTLS), and its wholly-owned subsidiary, VT Robotics, Inc, for $36 million. The acquisition will be carried out by way of a merger with VT Robotics, a special newly incorporated entity established for the transaction. The merger will see Aethon as…
F.I.R.S.T. Global competition off to a rousing start with all teams getting visas
After much uproar, media attention, and political pressure, Pres. Trump intervened and enabled all the teams headed to Washington, DC for the F.I.R.S.T Global Robotics Championship whose visas had been held up or denied to get their visas – some as late as two days before the event. Although the Afghan team got all the…
Hand-wringing hides the fact that Mexico is employing more and fewer are coming to work in the U.S.
Manufacturers, robotics associations, ethicists and media pundits are still fighting the robotics and jobs issue yet The Association for Advancing Automation (A3) cites that between 2010 and 2016, 136,748 robots were shipped to the US —the most in any seven-year period in the US robotics industry. At the same time, US manufacturing employment increased by 894,000 and the…
The ups (and downs) of tech, robotic and AI funding
SoftBank’s Pepper humanoid robot operation (a joint venture with Foxconn, Alibaba and SoftBank) has incurred a big $274 million loss while Asia more than doubled the amount of funding for tech startups thus far in 2017. No one ever said VC funding was for the faint of heart. The Ups According to PwC and CB…