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by Andra
At #WebSummit 2017, I was part of a panel on what the future will bring in 2030 with John Vickers from Blue Abyss, Jacques Van den Broek from Randstad and Stewart Rogers from Venture Beat. John talked about how technology will allow humans to explore amazing new places. Jacques demonstrated how humans were more complex …
Continue reading “How will robots & AI change our way of life in 2030?”
by Andra
Robotics isn’t gender neutral, it’s gender blind. And that means that there are a lot of hidden opportunities for savvy investors and entrepreneurs. One of the first robotics companies I followed was Restoration Robotics, a Silicon Valley based company that’s raised more than $111 M USD in 6 rounds. Restoration Robotics saw a niche for robotics …
Continue reading “When being a woman in robotics gives you the edge”
by Andra
Sophisticated household robots are only just starting to show up in our lives, but all the building blocks for a veritable “Cambrian explosion” of robotics are there, as Gill Pratt described it when he was running the recent DARPA Robotics Challenge. The service robotics industry IS emerging, and we will soon be seeing robots of …
by Andra
First it was robot vacuum cleaners, now it seems to be robot kitchen appliances, proving that robots are back in the popular imagination as household helpers. The Rotimatic is a ‘robotic’ flatbread maker from Zimplistic, who have just completed a Series B investment round of $11.5 million from NSI Ventures, based in Singapore, and RBVC, the venture arm of Robert …
Continue reading “Consumer robotics hots up with Bosch funding Rotimatic”
by Andra
SoftBank, FoxConn and Alibaba have today cemented a strong robotics initiative. Having acquired a majority stake in Aldebaran in 2012, just after the Amazon acquisition of Kiva, SoftBank’s interest in robots has been cause for confusion. Do they want an ‘emotional’ humanoid robot or is their interest in Aldebaran a pathway towards a more practical …
Continue reading “Forget Google and unicorns, Asian dragons are going to dominate robotics”
by Andra
*updated* SoftBank today announced a $236 million investment into their robotics division by Alibaba and FoxConn for marketing and distribution, including Pepper and Fetch robots. Fetch Robotics has just announced a $20 million Series A round lead by SoftBank, on top of the earlier seed investments of $3 million from Shasta Ventures and O’Reilly Alpha …
Continue reading “Fetch and SRI show that useful humanoids are on the horizon”
by Andra
I’ve been live tweeting all the action from the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals 2015. It’s been exciting and definitely not like watching paint dry this time. It’s amazing how far and how fast the Grand Challenge has pushed teams to perform. Just like with the DARPA driving Grand Challenge, there is now a pathway from …
by Andra
To celebrate Ada Lovelace Day, I started publishing a list of 25 amazing women in robotics, covering a whole range of areas from research to business. The first list came out last year (2013) and now here is the 2014 list. Great news is that we already have a backlog of great contenders for the …
by Andra
The 1953 New Yorker cartoon that started the “Take me to your leader” meme showed two aliens newly arrived on earth asking a donkey to, effectively, give them policy guidance. This is exactly what our ‘brave new’ human-robot world looks like. Complex technologies can have profound and subtle impacts on the world and robotics is …
