In the Democratic race for U.S. president, Bill de Blasio has proposed robot taxes, while Andrew Yang offers universal basic income. Did uncertainty around automation and jobs contribute to Donald Trump’s election?

Humans are fallible by definition. Robots, on the other hand, are capable of performing the most tedious missions consistently. It is this premise that drives CivDrone‘s founder Tom Yeshurun, an Israeli-born engineer, to disrupt the trillion dollar construction market with an aerial surveying robot. As the entrepreneur explains, “Infrastructure projects are very complex and long.…

The biggest mystery in the universe could possibly be right here on Earth. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as much as 95% of the oceans and 99% of the ocean floor has yet to be explored. Given more than 70% of the planet is covered by water, the promise for unmanned…

I was on the phone recently with a large multinational corporate investor discussing the applications for robotics in the energy market. He expressed his frustration about the lack of products to inspect and repair active oil and gas pipelines, citing too many catastrophic accidents. His point was further endorsed by a Huffington Post article that…

In the spirit of Ada Lovelace, one female researcher and entrepreneur is working to build a robot that provides positive human-machine interaction but does not replace the need for people.

The shock ripped through the industry, on almost every social media platform techies were bemoaning the loss of Anki. As a former robo-toy maker, I read the epitaph months earlier in the title of Lara Sorokanich’s Medium post, “Anki’s AI Robot Is a Delightful (and Expensive) Desk Toy.” When asked this week to comment, I…

Are drones, AI, and robots developing faster than our ability to apply ethics? Recent discussions around AI ethics and drone deliveries versus private airspace demonstrate the need to think about ethics and technology.

Last week, attending the Our Crowd Summit, I felt engulfed by the breadth of innovation and minds gathered in Jerusalem’s International Convention Center. Jonathan Medved’s billion-dollar crowd-funding platform has launched some of Israel’s most promising mechatronic startups, including ReWalk, Intuition Robotics, Airobotics, and Argus Cyber Security. Household robotics, such as laundry robots, could yet be the next big…

Amazon has moved on as quickly as its same-day deliveries by announcing, almost concurrent with its breakup call to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, more than $1 billion of new funding for electric vehicles and self-driving cars. On Feb. 15, a day after reporting on Amazon’s rejection of New York City as the site for…

Abruptly, I entered the cab escaping the arctic weather to confront something worse than freezing rain – body odor. Luckily, another taxi pulled to the curb, and I continued my journey to last Tuesday’s RobotLab forum on Cybersecurity & Machines. Moderating a panel at the new Global Cyber Center, with John Frankel of ffVC and Guy Franklin of SOSA, I…

In the wake of the closure of Apple’s autonomous car division (Project Titan) this week, one questions if Steve Jobs’ axiom still holds true. “Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do,” declared Jobs, who…

Earlier this month, I crawled into Dr. Wendy Ju‘s autonomous car simulator to explore the future of human-machine interfaces at Cornell Tech’s Tata Innovation Center. Dr Ju recently moved to the Roosevelt Island campus from Stanford University. While in California, the roboticist was famous for making videos capturing people’s reactions to self-driving cars using students…

The sun may be setting on what David Letterman would call “Stupid Robot Tricks,” as intelligent machines are beginning to surpass humans in a wide variety of manual and intellectual pursuits. In March 2016, Google’s DeepMind software program AlphaGo defeated the reining Go champion, Lee Sedol. Go, a Chinese game that originated more than 3,000…

Touring the 880-acre FedEx facility in Memphis, I marveled at the speed and efficiency of the automation technologies that can process close to half a million shipments an hour and 250 flights a day. The cargo hub is a shining example of the synthesis of humans and machines. This past March, FedEx announced it is…

Last June, a massive dust storm engulfed Mars and immobilized the most famous robots in the galaxy, Opportunity and Curiosity. This is not the first time Martian dirt has prevented Opportunity from recharging its solar panels. Its creators originally predicted that the planet’s harsh weather conditions would limit the rover’s mission to ninety sols (the…

Last Wednesday, I attended AeroVironment’s presentation of its contribution to NASA’s Mars Helicopter mission. The autonomous vertical-lift drone is remarkably capable of flying through the planet’s thin atmosphere, as demonstrated on Earth in a vacuum chamber by AeroVironment CEO Wahid Nawabi. The drone will provide a bird’s-eye view of the Martian landscape to guide the growing fleet of terrestrial rovers through…

Social robot company Jibo is sadly running on fumes after burning through nearly $73 million in funding. In a story first reported by BostInno and since confirmed by The Robot Report, Jibo has laid off the majority of its workforce to enable “additional time to secure additional funding or pursue an exit.” Jibo was once heralded as “the first…

Sitting in New York City, looking up at the clear June skies, I wonder if I am staring at an endangered phenomena. According to many in the unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) industry, skylines across the country soon will be filled with flying cars, quadcopter deliveries, emergency drones, and other robo-flyers. Moving one step closer to…

Here #SpotMini performs. @BostonDynamics @WTWH_Media @DesignWorld @therobotreport @SteveCrowe #RoboticsSummit2018 pic.twitter.com/PG9aNILYFI — Paul J. Heney (@DW_Editor) May 24, 2018 If the robotics industry had a celebrity, it would be SpotMini of Boston Dynamics. At the Robotics Summit & Showcase, produced by The Robot Report and WTWH Media, the mechanical dog strutted onto the floor of the…

Three and half years ago, I stood on the corner of West Street and gasped as two window washers clung to life at the end of a rope a thousand feet above. By the time rescue crews reached the men on the 69th floor of 1 World Trade they were close to passing out from…

Three and half years ago, I stood on the corner of West Street and gasped as two window washers clung to life at the end of a rope a thousand feet above. By the time rescue crews reached the men on the 69th floor of 1 World Trade they were close to passing out from…

I was dumbfounded by the XPONENTIAL 2018 keynote speech by Professor Zeynep Tufekci of the University of North Carolina. To paraphrase, ‘In the future, we will no longer need two pilots, planes will have just one captain and a dog. The dog will be there to bite the human in case he touches anything.’ Walking the…

The lights are going out at malls across the United States with more than 20 major retail bankruptcies in 2017. As of today, store closures have skyrocketed to 7,000 doors throughout the nation, affecting such iconic brands as Toys R Us, Walgreens, Gap, Sam’s Club, The Children’s Place, Hallmark, Stride Ride, Aeropostale, Wet Seal, The…

Several years ago, Canary Pete’s political cartoon flooded email inboxes and social media pages. The humorous illustration showed a middle-aged executive walking into a typical job interview, with the exception that he had to build his own office chair (since he was applying to work at IKEA). Pete’s satire might be short-lived, as last week…

In a basement of New York University in 2013, Dr. Sergei Lupashin wowed the room of 100 leading technology enthusiasts with one of the first indoor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) demonstrations. During his presentation, Dr. Lupashin of ETH Zurich  attached a dog leash to an aerial drone while declaring to the audience, “there has to be…