Brain Corp, a San Diego-based provider of autonomous navigation systems, continues to expand its footprint in the robotic floor cleaning market. Brain today announced a partnership with Nilfisk, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based cleaning solutions provider that has been around for 110-plus years. Nilfisk will license the BrainOS AI platform for the production, deployment, and support of…
Avidbots raises $24M for commercial floor cleaning robots
Avidbots, a Kitchener, Ontario-based company that makes commercial floor cleaning robots, raised $23.6 million in Series B funding led by returning investor True Ventures. This latest round of funding raises Avidbots’ venture capital financing to a total of $36 million. Founded in 2014 by Pablo Molina and Faizan Sheikh, Avidbots’ first product, Neo, is an…
Drone maker Aria Insights, formerly CyPhy Works, shuts down
Aria Insights, formerly known as CyPhy Works, has shut down, The Robot Report has learned. Danvers, Mass.-based Aria Insights raised $39 million over seven funding rounds, according to Crunchbase. The last funding came in June 2018 when it raised $4.6 million in debt financing. The company was primarily known for its Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications (PARC)…
NVIDIA Jetson platform now supports AWS Robomaker
There was no shortage of robotics-related announcements today at NVIDIA’s GPU Tech Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California. We will start with NVIDIA’s Jetson AI computer platform adding support for AWS Robomaker, the cloud robotics service from Amazon Web Services. AWS RoboMaker makes it easier to develop, test and deploy intelligent robotics applications at scale.…
Keecker consumer robotics company shuts down
Keecker, a consumer robotics company based in France, has closed down. Founded in 2012, Keecker raised $8 million, according to Crunchbase, and was building a consumer robot that could autonomously navigate and provide users with entertainment, security, communication, and smart home data. Pierre Lebeau, founder and CEO of Keecker, made the announcement in a blog.…
Mamut mobile robot automates data collection for farmers
Agriculture is a $5 trillion industry, and it’s ripe for automation. Cambridge Consultants today announced Mamut, an autonomous robot that explores crop fields, capturing data on health and yield at the level of individual plants and on a massive scale. By automating data capture, Mamut gives growers regular, precise and actionable information on their crops, enabling…
Robotics Summit & Expo announces academic registration discounts
Keynotes | Agenda | Speakers | Exhibitors | Register The Robotics Summit & Expo, produced by The Robot Report and parent company WTWH Media, is pleased to announce its Academic Outreach Program. The program offers academics, researchers and students at colleges, universities and research centers complimentary and discounted full conference passes. The Robotics Summit &…
Waymo LiDAR sensor now available for robotics companies
Many have wondered about the revenue model for Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Alphabet. Here’s one approach: get into the sensor business. Waymo announced today its custom LiDAR sensors to customers that don’t compete with its robo-taxi business. The news was first reported by Bloomberg. Waymo said it will initially target robotics, security, and…
Inside HAHN Group’s plan to revive Rethink Robotics
The HAHN Group scooped up the IP and trademarks for the Sawyer collaborative robot and Intera software less than one month after Rethink Robotics Inc. shut down in October 2018. The German automation and robotics specialist, which has 30-plus years of automation experience, recently gave The Robot Report an exclusive look at how it plans to…
US robot shipments break record despite automotive decline
Keynotes | Speakers | Exhibitors | Register Companies in North America installed robots at a record pace in 2018, according the the Robotic Industries Association (RIA). The 35,880 units shipped in 2018 marked a 7 percent increase from 2017. And is the United States, specifically, robot shipments increased 15% to a record 28,478. Most areas showed…
Robotics Summit & Expo keynote lineup
The Robotics Summit & Expo, produced by The Robot Report, has announced the keynote lineup for the June 5-6 event at Boston’s Seaport World Trade Center. The Robotics Summit focuses on the technical issues involved with the design, development, manufacture and delivery of commercial-class robots. Click here to see the Robotics Summit speaker lineup. Registration…
The Robot Report February 2019 issue on cobots
We hope you enjoy the latest edition of The Robot Report, a special print section dedicated to collaborative robotics that was featured in the February 2019 issue of Design World, our sister publication and flagship publication at WTWH Media. Here is a breakdown of the collaborative robotics topics covered inside: Inside NVIDIA’s Collaborative Robotics Lab…
Waymo’s autonomous vehicles leave Apple in the dust
The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) this week released the disengagement reports for companies testing autonomous vehicles on public roads in California. The data, captured between Nov. 31, 2017 through Dec. 1, 2018, found that 48 companies reported driving 2 million miles in autonomous mode on California roads and highways. The California DMV defines a…
Endeavor acquisition positions FLIR as next-gen defense robot leader
FLIR Systems Inc. is moving full-steam ahead in its quest to be known as a provider of unmanned systems, not just the thermal imaging cameras, sensors, and components inside them. Wilsonville, Ore.-based FLIR this week agreed to acquire Chelmsford, Mass.-based Endeavor Robotics for $385 million in cash. This is the latest in a series of…
iRobot Terra robot lawn mower hopes to jumpstart U.S. market
It is finally happening. Kind of. iRobot will launch in 2019 its Terra robot lawn mower. The company has not announced specific availability or pricing, but it did say the Terra robot lawn mower will be available this year in Germany and as a beta program in the U.S. This is a much-anticipated announcement —…
5 humanoid robots to watch in 2019
Building humanoid robots that can do useful things in the real world, not just research labs, is very difficult. Besides being extremely expensive to build and buy, bipedal locomotion is the major hurdle robotics developers have yet to perfect. Quadruped robots such as Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini and ANYbotics’ ANYmal are more stable walkers and, therefore,…
Inside NVIDIA’s new robotics research lab
The Robot Report named NVIDIA a must-watch robotics company in 2019 due to its new Jetson AGX Xavier Module that it hopes will become the go-to brain for next-generation robots. Now there’s even more reason to keep an eye on NVIDIA’s robotics moves: the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker just opened its first full-blown robotics research…
10 robotics companies to watch in 2019
Kicking off a new year is always a great opportunity to look back at what transpired over the last 12 months. We passed along the top robotics stories and most-funded robotics companies of 2018. Now it is time to look ahead of what to watch in 2019. Stay tuned for trends to and startup companies to…
MassRobotics joins Robotics Summit & Expo as Strategic Partner
Business-to-business publisher WTWH Media, LLC announced that MassRobotics will serve as the exclusive Strategic Partner for the Robotics Summit & Expo to be held on June 4-6, 2019, in Boston, Massachusetts. In that role, MassRobotics will provide strategic guidance and act as a liaison to MassRobotics’ partners, sponsors, startup residents, and the robotics community at…
Robotics investments recap: December 2018
Robotics investments in December 2018 totaled at least $649.5 million worldwide with a total of 17 verified transactions. Unverifiable robotics investments have been excluded from this analysis. There are several robotics investments in which the amounts and rounds were not disclosed. If we verify those amounts and rounds, or come across new robotics investments, we…
10 biggest robotics stories of 2018
2018 was quite an eventful year for the robotics industry. It was full of ups and downs, of course, but it will unfortunately be remembered more for the downs than anything. So before we turn our attention to 2019 trends to watch, let’s recap the major robotics stories of 2018. Here is our recap of…
10 most funded robotics companies of 2018
Funding does not guarantee success. That is a lesson the robotics industry learned the hard way in 2018. Rethink Robotics, which raised $149.5 million in funding, shut down in October. Airware and Jibo suffered a similar fate this year after burning through $114 million and $73 million, respectively. Nonetheless, raising money plays a vital role in…
Robotics investments recap: November 2018
Robotics investments in November 2018 totaled at least $639.3 million worldwide with a total of 20 verified transactions. Unverifiable robotics investments have been excluded from this analysis. There are several robotics investments in which the amounts and rounds were not disclosed. If we verify those amounts and rounds, or come across new robotics investments, we will…
RightHand Robotics raises $23M; Mick Mountz joins board
RightHand Robotics, a Somerville, Mass-based company founded in 2014 by Leif Jentoft and Yaro Tenzer, closed a $23 million Series B round for its RightPick robotic piece-picking technology. The round was led by Menlo Ventures and included participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures) and existing investors Dream Incubator, Matrix Partners, and Playground Global. Prior to…
NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier Module delivers 32 TeraOPS for robots
NVIDIA announced at its Jetson Developer Meetup the Jetson AGX Xavier Module for autonomous machines, delivering up to 32 TeraOPs (TOPS) of accelerated computing capability. The NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier Module, which the company calls an AI computer, is now available for $1,099 (based on 1,000 unit volume). NVIDIA introduced the Jetson AGX Xavier developer…