Softbank Group continues to shake up its approach to robotics. It announced today that its robotics division, Softbank Robotics, will jointly develop commercial robots with Japanese electronics maker Iris Ohyama. The joint venture will be called Iris Robotics, and it forecast sales of $965 million by 2025. Iris Ohyama will own a 51% stake in…
Uisee raises $154M for autonomous driving technology
Uisee Technology, a Beijing-based autonomous driving technology startup, raised $154 million in funding from the Chinese government-backed Guokai National Manufacturing Transformation and Upgrade Fund. Uisee said the funding will be used to accelerate the development of its full-stack autonomous driving technology. Founded in 2016, Uisee’s autonomy stack helps create L4 autonomous vehicles for a variety…
Yaskawa taps Realtime Robotics’ motion planning expertise
Yaskawa is tapping Realtime Robotics’ motion planning technology to improve a variety of materials handling and fulfillment applications, including piece picking and mixed case palletizing. Yaskawa said using Realtime’s technology enables its robot cells to be deployed and used more efficiently. The first of these mixed pallet robot cells will soon start being installed at…
Edge Medical Robotics raises $92M Series B
Edge Medical Robotics has closed a $92.6 million Series B round of funding. The Shenzhen, China-based startup will use the funding to accelerate the development and commercialization of its robots for minimally invasive surgery. The company’s website is quite vague, but it reportedly has three products, including single- and multi-port robots for laparoscopic surgery and…
ABB launches preventative maintenance service
ABB introduced its Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) service that enables customers to create a preventive maintenance schedule for individual or robot fleets based on real-time operational data. ABB said the CBM service should optimize productivity and minimize downtime. CBM uses real-time data on robot operations to help identify any potential issues that could affect performance, including…
Epson Robots signs Industrial Control as new distributor
Epson Robots has signed Industrial Control as an official distributor in Michigan. Industrial Control is a minority-owned provider of factory automation solutions, products, and training. The partnership with Industrial Control involves the full lineup of Epson Robots’ automation products, including the extensive portfolio of SCARA and 6-Axis robots, as well as the integrated options such…
Hanwha Robotics releases HCR Advanced Series cobots
Hanwha Robotics has introduced a new series of 6-axis collaborative robotics arms – the HCR Advanced Series. The series includes three models (HCR-3A, HCR-5A, and HCR-12A) that offer new functionality for Hanwha cobots, including easier integration of end of arm tooling, the company said. The HCR-3A is a small, lightweight cobot designed to be used…
How to get ROS up & running on Spot
In September 2020, Clearpath Robotics released a ROS package for Boston Dynamics’ Spot quadruped. The idea was to allow robotics researchers to leverage ROS capabilities out-of-the-box, as well as open-source libraries, tools and the greater ROS community to accelerate their robotics development. Spot comes with a dedicated computer, power and communication interfaces and a flexible…
Wingcopter raises $22M Series A for commercial drones
Wingcopter, a German developer of commercial drones founded in 2017, raised $22 million in Series A funding. Wingcopter will use the funding to scale its presence in the drone delivery space, with a special focus on healthcare-related applications. The Wingcopter 178 Heavy Lift drone can cover distances up to 120 kilometers (74.5 miles) and offers…
What the FAA’s landmark approval means for commercial drones
Welcome to Episode 31 of The Robot Report Podcast, which brings conversations with robotics innovators straight to you. Join us each week for discussions with leading roboticists, innovative robotics companies, and other key members of the robotics community. You can subscribe to The Robot Report Podcast on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, SoundCloud, Spotify and more. Please subscribe to the podcast and leave us a…
Marc Raibert on lessons learned from Atlas’ dance skills
We’ve learned a lot over the last month about how Boston Dynamics’ robots became such talented dancers. We now know the RBR50 company employed human dancers, reflexive control, simulation and new Choreographer software, among many other techniques. But we’ve yet to hear from Marc Raibert, founder, former CEO, and now chairman of Boston Dynamics. Until…
Bear Flag robotics raises $7.9M for autonomous tractors
Bear Flag Robotics, a Calif.-based developer of autonomous driving technology for tractors, closed a $7.9 million seed extension funding round. After closing a $4.6 million seed round two years ago, Bear Flag Robotics has now raised a total of $12.5 million. Founded in 2017, Bear Flag Robotics will use the new funding to expand its…
ATI releases end-effector kits for FANUC CRX cobots
ATI Industrial Automation has released a slew of end-of-arm tooling kits that are compatible with FANUC’s CRX Series collaborative robot arms. N.C.-based ATI Industrial Automation said the kits include options for automatic tool changing, force sensing, and material removal. They enable tasks such as machine tending, part inspection, surface preparation and more. ATI said the…
‘Robomorphic computing’ aims to quicken robots’ response time
Contemporary robots can move quickly. “The motors are fast, and they’re powerful,” says Sabrina Neuman. Yet in complex situations, like interactions with people, robots often don’t move quickly. “The hang up is what’s going on in the robot’s head,” she adds. Perceiving stimuli and calculating a response takes a “boatload of computation,” which limits reaction…
Cruise autonomous vehicles heading to Japan
Cruise will be sending its first self-driving test vehicles to Japan in 2021. Details about where, when and how many are unknown at this point. But the move appears to deepen the autonomous vehicle partnership between GM and Honda that started in 2018. GM is the majority shareholder in Cruise, while Honda is a major…
Advanced Motion Controls adds compact, high-power servo drives
The FM060-25-CM is part of a new breed of micro-sized, high-power servo drives, immediately available from RBR50 company Advanced Motion Controls. Rated to output 25-A continuous and 50-A peak, this fully featured digital servo drive is small enough to fit in the tightest locations. It’s well suited for mobile and portable applications, including automated mobile…
New directions for an old robotics toolbox
For tens of thousands of students globally, over the last two decades, a part of their education involved an open-source software toolkit known as the Robotics Toolbox for MATLAB. This started as a modest collection of tools to help me in my PhD research in the early 1990s. It leveraged MATLAB, at that time a…
TransEnterix machine vision system for robotic surgery receives CE Mark
TransEnterix received CE Mark approval for its Intelligent Surgical Unit for the Senhance system. The Intelligent Surgical Unit (ISU) enables machine vision capabilities on the Senhance surgical system, providing digital laparoscopic programs in Europe to be augmented by intelligence capabilities in surgical settings. The FDA cleared the ISU in March 2020. Research Triangle Park, N.C.-basd…
Cruise raises $2B, partners with Microsoft on autonomous vehicles
Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, raised $2 billion in new equity funding today. The San Francisco-based company said its post-money valuation is $30 billion. Cruise has raised about $7.3 billion since it was founded in 2013. GM, Honda Motor, and other institutional investors participated in the funding round. GM remains the majority stakeholder.…
Laser-steering microrobot aims to refine minimally invasive surgery
A new device that is 6 millimeters in diameter and 16 millimeters in length is capable of focusing and steering a fiber-delivered laser beam at high speeds.
China’s WeRide raises another $110M for autonomous vehicles
Less than one month after raising a $200 million Series B1 round of funding, Guangzhou, China-based WeRide raised another $110 million via Series B2 and B3 rounds. This brings the Series B to a total of $310 million for the developer of Level 4 autonomous vehicles. WeRide said it already kicked off its Series C…
How Boston Dynamics’ robots learned to dance
Boston Dynamics detailed how its Atlas and Spot robots learned to dance, including its use of choreographers and model predictive control.