by Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report Top Robotics-Related Stories of 2013  (all appearing in The Robot Report) Google sets up Robot Division; acquires 7 start ups plus Boston Dynamics to jump-start operations ROBO ETF tracking Robo-stox index created to let investors invest in the robotics industry WSJ, NYT, CBS 60-Minutes, CNN Money,…

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report Remote visitors drive Beam robots to chat (and share a laugh) with exhibitors. Photos courtesy of Suitable Technologies, Inc. RoboBusiness 2013, held last week at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley, was revitalized from previous RoboBusiness events. Throughout the three day event, it was…

By Frank Tobe, editor/publisher, The Robot Report To be able to choose between proprietary software packages is to be able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master. Freedom means not using proprietary software.   – Richard Stallman, open systems advocate Certainly robotics has its share of proprietary software and control systems. Each robot…

“Moore’s Law has never moved faster than is moving inside the phone you’ve already got in your pocket. The pace of development and the price performance curve is moving faster in smartphones than it’s ever moved in history and we’re taking advantage by drafting off this momentum and by employing military-grade technologies at toy prices,” said Chris…

By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher, The Robot Report For many years now Willow Garage has invested in open source and open platform robotics. Their goal has been a reflection of the vision of it’s founder (and chief funder) to advance the state of robotic technology in autonomous devices. And advance the state of robotics it…

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, Publisher, The Robot Report with Manoj Sahi, roboticist and educator, India   Imagine being present at the birth of a new industry. It is an industry based on groundbreaking new technologies, wherein a handful of well-established corporations sell highly specialized devices for business use, and a fast-growing number of start-up companies produce innovative…

This holiday season, people are looking to get their money’s worth from gift giving. Gifts need to be either truly phenomenal, practical or inexpensive. In the phenomenal category, what’s more exciting than getting a robot as a holiday gift? The Robot Report, a site which tracks the business of robotics, has prepared this list of…

San Francisco city view from aboard the IROS 2011 sunset dinner cruise party boat By Frank Tobe. Publisher, The Robot Report The week long IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2011) was host to more than 1,500 roboticists and robot-interested people from 40 different countries, including a prominent group of well-known speakers and…

Pieter Abbeel was one of this year’s MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 (TR 35) award winners as was Brian Gerkey of Willow Garage. Pieter and his team at UC Berkeley programmed a robot to learn how to perform tasks such as folding laundry without detailed instructions. Brian oversees development of the Willow Garage open…

by Frank Tobe and Manoj Sahi The consumer robotic market has been on a roller coaster ride of evolution and market penetration. The amount of money companies and consumers were paying for robots and the features that they were getting ultimately did not match up. Low-cost service robots have similar problems. The technologies and robot…