Rovco and Forth Engineering are among the U.K. organizations participating in the Autonomous Aquatic Inspection and Intervention or A2I2 project, which has tested an autonomous underwater vehicles for multiple uses.

ANYbotics is partnering with maxon, which will provide drives for its ANYmal quadruped robot, while ANYbotics provides access to global robotics markets.

In August 2020, autonomous vehicles, industrial automation for manufacturing and supply chains, and healthcare robotics continued to receive funding.

SPX is adding ULC Robotics, which provides inspection robots as a service, drones, and software to utility companies, to its location and inspection portfolio.

PrecisionHawk, which provides drone and data services to the energy and other industries, has received two patents for UTM, or a unified traffic management system for aircraft and drones.

In July 2020, autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, and surgical robots continued to receive funding at steady levels in comparison with the same period last year.

Startup Horizon31 has licensed a global communications system called MAVnet from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory that it said could enable remote drone operations over the Internet.

Boston Dynamics has built partnerships to add capabilities to its Spot quadruped robot. The Rocos cloud-based management platform allows for greater autonomy as well as remote control.

RMUS, or Rocky Mountain Unmanned Systems, will distribute, integrate, and service Sarcos Robotics’ Guardian S robotic crawler system. The mobile robot is designed to be a rugged platform for industrial inspection, public safety, and more.

Toyota AI Ventures has renewed its call for innovative startups to submit technologies that solve urban challenges for up to $2 million in funding.

Olis Robotics, whose Olis Master Controller uses machine learning for more precise controls, is working with remotely operated vehicle maker Aleron Subsea to offer easy ROV upgrades.

AI vision company Neurala and drone services provider AviSight are combining efforts to enable AviSight’s Live Look Fault Vision to inspect critical infrastructure.

Gecko Robotics, which has developed a wall-climbing robot for industrial inspections, has raised Series B funding to continue to grow its staff.

DroneDeploy has updated its software offerings, entered into international partnerships, and raised funding for drone inspections.

AMP Robotics has raised Series A funding for its AI and robotics to efficiently sort trash and make recycling economical.

Chinese researchers have developed an aerial manipulator capable of writing. It could someday help maintain skyscrapers and other structures too difficult or dangerous for humans to reach.

The Sprint Robotics Awards, presented at a conference in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, recognized three leaders in developing inspection and maintenance robotics systems.

SPRINT Robotics is a Dutch organization working to share information and develop standards for robotics used for infrastructure inspection and maintenance.

SlothBot, a project shown at ICRA by Georgia Institute of Technology researchers, is designed to conserve energy and could be useful for environmental monitoring, infrastructure maintenance, and other long-term applications.

The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE winner was the GEBCO-NF Alumni team, which consisted of people from 14 countries. The executive director of the competition describes the teams and goal of advancing undersea mapping technology.

MassRobotics continues to make strategic partnerships as it helps the Massachusetts robotics cluster grow and develop. Its latest partners include Analog Devices, Honda, and Lockheed Martin.

In 2010 I wrote that there were three sponsored research projects to solve the problem of safely inspecting and maintaining high voltage transmission lines using robotics. Existing 2010 methods ranged from humans crawling the lines to helicopters flying close-by and scanning, to cars and jeeps with people and binoculars attempting to scan with the human eye.…