Robotics & Automation News

Where Innovation Meets Imagination

Sam Francis

Starship and Sodexo send more delivery robots to university

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Starship Technologies and Sodexo have launched a robot food delivery service at Northern Arizona University in partnership with several restaurants

It’s something your mom always told you – eat your breakfast – and now college students are starting to do just that, thanks to Starship robots and Sodexo.

Research has shown that up to 88 percent of college students skip breakfast, primarily because of lack of time, but that number is starting to turn around when delivery robots arrive on campus.

Starting today, students at Northern Arizona University’s Flagstaff campus will have the convenience of receiving food delivered by robot.  [Read more…] about Starship and Sodexo send more delivery robots to university

Optimus Ride to launch self-driving vehicle service in New York and California

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Optimus Ride, a self-driving vehicle technology company, plans to launch its self-driving systems in New York.

The initial rollout will be at two sites:

  1. the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a 300-acre modern industrial park with over 400 manufacturing businesses and 9,000 people working on site; and
  2. Paradise Valley Estates, a private 80-acre, nonprofit Life Plan Community located in Fairfield, California.

Optimus Ride says it will provide residents and workers at both sites with access to efficient and convenient self-driving mobility within defined, geofenced areas.  [Read more…] about Optimus Ride to launch self-driving vehicle service in New York and California

Could an IoT security domino effect derail robotics before it ever goes mainstream?

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By Eric Jensen, head of IoT product management at Canonical

2019 will be a big year for robotics, as we begin to see the expansion of automation technologies into new markets.

But with IoT security still a weak spot, one major attack within robotics could have a domino effect on the entire industry.

Add to this the verticals that robots are beginning to infiltrate – healthcare and agriculture for example – and the threat becomes immediate and very real.  [Read more…] about Could an IoT security domino effect derail robotics before it ever goes mainstream?

Avidbots raises $23.6 million in new funding for its floor cleaning robot

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Avidbots, a maker of commercial floor-cleaning robots, has raised $23.6 million in new funding.

The company says it will use the funds to accelerate global expansion, and wants to bring robots to everyday life to “expand human potential”.

The Series B funding round was led by returning investor True Ventures. Other returning investors include GGV Capital, SOSV, Real Ventures, and 500 Startups Canada.  [Read more…] about Avidbots raises $23.6 million in new funding for its floor cleaning robot

Scientists take first step towards creating terrifying liquid metal robot last seen in Terminator 2

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Researchers create new kind of robot composed of many simple particles with no centralized control or single point of failure

The concept of “gray goo”, a robot comprised of billions of nanoparticles, has fascinated science fiction fans for decades. But most researchers have dismissed it as just a wild theory.

Current robots are usually self-contained entities made of interdependent subcomponents, each with a specific function. If one part fails, the robot stops working. In robotic swarms, each robot is an independently functioning machine.

In a new study published today in Nature, researchers at Columbia Engineering and MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab demonstrate for the first time a way to make a robot composed of many loosely coupled components, or “particles”. (See video below.) [Read more…] about Scientists take first step towards creating terrifying liquid metal robot last seen in Terminator 2

IMI Precision Engineering to launch electric actuator solution at Hannover Messe

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IMI Precision Engineering is preparing to launch its new electric actuator solution at the Hannover Messe industrial technology show.

The company says its new actuator, called the IMI Norgren Elion, is designed to reduce energy consumption and total cost of ownership.

It adds that it is “ideally suited” for applications within the automotive, packaging and labelling, materials handling, machine tools and food and beverage sectors.  [Read more…] about IMI Precision Engineering to launch electric actuator solution at Hannover Messe

Lumotive launches new LiDAR to enable autonomous vehicles

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Lumotive, the Bill Gates-funded startup developing LiDAR systems for autonomous vehicles, has launched a beam-steering technology which it claims will “significantly improve” the performance, reliability and cost of LiDAR systems for the emerging self-driving car industry.

Initially targeting the robo-taxi market, Lumotive’s patented system uses liquid crystal metasurfaces (LCM) and silicon fabrication to achieve “unmatched levels” of manufacturing efficiency while simultaneously delivering unprecedented range, resolution and frame rate.

Dr William Colleran, Lumotive co-founder and CEO, says: “Lumotive’s solution is ideal for automakers and Tier-1s seeking safer yet more cost-effective perception solutions for their vehicles.  [Read more…] about Lumotive launches new LiDAR to enable autonomous vehicles

Intel and Cray contracted by US government to develop ‘first exascale supercomputer’

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Chip giant Intel and high-performance computing specialist Cray are both working with the US government’s Department of Energy to develop what is claimed to be the world’s first exascale supercomputer.

The word “exascale” in this context refers to computing systems capable of at least one billion billion – or one quintillion – floating-point operations, or FLOPs.

That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 computer calculations per second and represents a thousandfold increase over petascale supercomputers, which is the de facto standard today.  [Read more…] about Intel and Cray contracted by US government to develop ‘first exascale supercomputer’

Nvidia launches $99 ‘Nano’ computer for robotics development

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Nvidia has launched the “Jetson Nano” computer, saying it is designed to deal with artificial intelligence and makes it possible to create “millions of intelligent systems”. 

The small but powerful CUDA-X AI computer delivers 472 gigaflops of compute performance for running modern AI workloads and is highly power-efficient, consuming as little as 5 watts.

Unveiled at the GPU Technology Conference by Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Jetson Nano comes in two versions – the $99 devkit for developers, makers and enthusiasts and the $129 production-ready module for companies looking to create mass-market edge systems.  [Read more…] about Nvidia launches $99 ‘Nano’ computer for robotics development

Apple releases new version of iMac with twice as much power

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Apple has updated its iMac line with up to 8-core Intel 9th-generation processors for the first time and powerful Vega graphics options, delivering dramatic increases in both compute and graphics performance.

The company says that both consumer and professional users will notice their iMac is faster for everyday tasks all the way up to the most demanding pro workloads.

This boost in performance, combined with its Retina display, sleek all-in-one design, quiet operation, fast storage and memory, modern connectivity and macOS Mojave, makes iMac “the world’s best desktop”, says Apple.  [Read more…] about Apple releases new version of iMac with twice as much power