Robotics & Automation News

Where Innovation Meets Imagination

Sam Francis

Electric vehicles drop in price, but ‘most remain unprofitable’, says Lux Research

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Electric vehicles have fallen in price, but “most remain unprofitable”, according to Lux Research.

The automotive industry is under pressure to reduce emissions, both from government regulations and from consumers who are growing more conscious about the environmental impact of their vehicles.

Electrified powertrains are a promising avenue to reduce or eliminate vehicle emissions for automakers. [Read more…] about Electric vehicles drop in price, but ‘most remain unprofitable’, says Lux Research

Electric air taxi startup Lilium raises another $35 million to take total investment to $375 million

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Lilium, the Munich-based aviation company developing an all-electric, vertical take-off and landing aircraft for regional air mobility, has raised another $35 million. 

The company says investment management partnership, Baillie Gifford, the new investor, is known for its track record of investing in high-impact technology companies such as Amazon, Tesla, Airbnb, Spotify and SpaceX.

Baillie Gifford has invested $35m in Lilium, extending the startup’s current funding round to more than $275 million, and total investment to date to more than $375 million. [Read more…] about Electric air taxi startup Lilium raises another $35 million to take total investment to $375 million

Xilinx launches ‘industry’s first’ 20 nanometer space-grade FPGA chip

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Chipmaker Xilinx claims it has achieved “lift-off” with the launch of what it says is the industry’s first 20 nanometer space-grade FPGA for satellite and space applications.

Xilinx, which invented field-programmable gate array chips, says the new FPGA provides full radiation tolerance and ultra-high throughput and bandwidth performance for satellite and space applications.

The new 20nm Radiation Tolerant Kintex UltraScale XQRKU060 FPGA provides true unlimited on-orbit reconfiguration, over a 10x increase in digital signal processing (DSP) performance – ideal for payload applications – and full radiation tolerance across all orbits, says Xilinx. [Read more…] about Xilinx launches ‘industry’s first’ 20 nanometer space-grade FPGA chip

Severstal expands automation capabilities with second investment in Airborne

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PAO Severstal, one of the world’s largest vertically integrated steel and mining companies, has led a second tranche of investment into Dutch company Airborne, a developer of digital automation platforms for the production of composite parts and products with integrated composites.

The total investment in Airborne has already amounted to “several tens of millions of dollars”, says Severstal.

In spite of the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to many venture projects on the global market being placed on hold, Severstal led the new investment in Airborne with support of existing shareholders including HPE Growth. [Read more…] about Severstal expands automation capabilities with second investment in Airborne

Tech giants and driverless cars: Racing against the automakers

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Modern tech conglomerate Amazon – whose interests range from online shopping, through computing devices such as the Kindle and Amazon Echo, to cloud computing and even space exploration – is in advanced talks to acquire self-driving startup Zoox, according to a report on the Financial Times website. 

It’s not the first time Amazon has shown interest in the automotive sector. The company was the lead investor in Aurora Innovation’s $530 million funding round last year.

Aurora is seen as a rival to Waymo, the driverless car company set up by Google, another tech giant. [Read more…] about Tech giants and driverless cars: Racing against the automakers

Hydrogen vs electric vs petrol: How will cars be powered in the future?

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Electric vehicles sales have seen sustained increases in the past few years and significant milestones have been reached in many countries.

According to data published on Wikipedia by independent researcher Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz, cumulative global plug-in electric vehicle sales passed 5 million units in December 2018.

Five million is just a drop in the ocean in terms of the number of all the “light-duty” vehicles – vehicles weighing 4,500 kg or less, which includes cars, vans, and small trucks – on the roads worldwide, which, according to a Guidehouse Insights report, numbers around 1.2 billion in total. Other researchers estimate the figure to be around 2.5 billion. [Read more…] about Hydrogen vs electric vs petrol: How will cars be powered in the future?

Support for Universal Basic Income growing as economies look to recover from coronavirus devastation

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A couple of years ago, RoboticsAndAutomationNews.com published a story about Finland introducing a “Universal Basic Income” for a small number of its citizens as an experiment.

The Finnish government’s idea was that it would study the possibility of using UBI as a way to offset the unemployment caused by automation.

Although it was well worth reporting, we were somewhat flippant about UBI, suggesting it was a communist idea that would never take off. Finland, of course, was within the sphere of influence of the old Communist or Eastern Bloc, and the now-gone USSR. [Read more…] about Support for Universal Basic Income growing as economies look to recover from coronavirus devastation

6 River Systems strengthens capabilities of its warehouse robots

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6 River Systems, now part of leading global commerce company Shopify, says it has strengthened the capabilities of its warehouse robots.

6RS also released recommendations to its customers to further protect employees from pathogens during the picking process in warehouses and fulfillment centers, as well as “dark stores” – retail centers or distribution centers solely used for online order fulfillment.

The company’s recommendations span operational modifications, improvements to the hardware and software for its collaborative robot, Chuck, and highlight the availability of new products for its fulfillment solution. [Read more…] about 6 River Systems strengthens capabilities of its warehouse robots

Peachtree Corners launches ‘world’s first fleet of self-driving e-scooters’ as part of styling itself as a smart city

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Peachtree Corners, a tiny city in the state of Georgia, USA, is launching what it believes is the “world’s first fleet of self-driving e-scooters” as part of styling itself out as a smart city.

Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners is on a mission to solve many of the technology issues facing cities and municipalities around the country. For many, the term “smart city” is an unclear concept.

For Peachtree Corners, Georgia, it’s about empowering the latest in emerging technologies to solve real-world problems. [Read more…] about Peachtree Corners launches ‘world’s first fleet of self-driving e-scooters’ as part of styling itself as a smart city

Opinion: Cloud robotics is a game changer, but three challenges lurk

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By Rhys Davies, product manager at Canonical, publisher of Ubuntu open-source operating system

The service robotics market is projected to soar from $37 billion worldwide this year to $102.5 billion by 2025, according to ResearchAndMarkets. Every week, it seems, we see some cool new application, like the warehouse automation solution shown in the video below.

A major reason for robotics’ emergence as a hot technology trend often spoken in the same breath as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) is the convergence of robotics with the cloud.

Cloud robotics – a term first coined in 2010 by then-Google research scientist James Kuffner – provides vast amounts of processing power and storage resources to expand robot capabilities. [Read more…] about Opinion: Cloud robotics is a game changer, but three challenges lurk