Year: 2013

FounderDating hardware edition

First crowdfunding, now startup services – hardware is eating the software world. FounderDating launched a hardware vertical on Wednesday, after seeing increasing demand from hardware entrepreneurs who were bringing a whole new set of discussions to the FounderDating website. This isn’t the first new direction for FounderDating, they recently started an education vertical as well …

Dash launching Dragon hardware crowdfunding platform

  Dash is the first product to launch today on Dragon Innovation‘s new hardware crowdfunding site. Dragon Innovation was founded in 2009 by Scott Miller and Herman Pang, ex iRobot and Hasbro. Dragon are partnering with GE, Qualcomm and freescale to bring us this new hardware crowdfunding site, which seems to be nicely positioned to …

Blabdroid: From Tribeca to Bolt

Alex Reben’s dissertation robot, Boxie “the needy robot” morphed into Blabdroid, the documentary film making robots. Blabdroid were the official “robots in residence” at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in April and are now touring the world’s film festivals, before taking up a somewhat different role in a Boston based hardware accelerator. Bolt’s have just announced their …

Does crowdfunding derisk robotics?

Crowdfunding is often cited as one of the mechanisms accelerating robot startups, alongside COTS, reduced costs, rapid prototyping, digital manufacturing, smart phones, connectivity etc. The entire premise of Chris Anderson’s new book “Makers: the new Industrial Revolution” is that we now live in a time when the barriers to hardware production are lower than they’ve …

SUSBEXPO: The first unmanned systems business conference

SUSBEXPO is the first conference about unmanned systems to really focus on the growing commercial opportunities. AUVSI put on a spectacular annual show but it is predominantly military systems. SUSBEXPO is the brain child of Patrick Egan, who is a UAS business consultant, as well as being deeply involved in AUVSI, SUASNews, building on a background …

More space robots as Grishin funds NanoSatisfi

NanoSatisfi, a Silicon Valley based cubesat startup, today received $300,000 investment from Grishin Robotics bringing their total seed funding to $1,750,000, not including their initial successful Kickstarter campaign of $106,330 and CEO Peter Platzer’s personal investment. NanoSatisfi aim to provide affordable space satellite access to everyone through their autonomous cubesats. The first launch dates have …

Crowdfunding robots: Robot Film Festival

While I love getting robots in the mail, crowdfunding sites are also good for supporting a whole range of robot related activities. The 3rd annual Robot Film Festival just launched a Kickstarter campaign to complement ticket sales on Eventbrite. This year, the Robot Film Festival is at Bot&Dolly studios in San Francisco on July 20-21, …

Food delivery drones. But is it a business?

Food drone delivery ideas are taking off all over the place. But is it a business or just an advertizing stunt? Tacocopter was one of the first although still more of a theory than a practice. Stanford Robotics Club is carrying on the mission and delivering subs to students. Joining the ranks are an African beer …

Crowdfunding robots

Do you like getting robots in the mail? I’m a sucker for cool crowdfunded robots like some of these ones. But this can also be serious research for your startup. Crowdfunding is a great way to extend your prototyping time, build a community or get your preorders for the first manufacturing run. However, successful campaigns require …