Solar Power has been hyped for years as one of the key growth industries in American manufacturing. Current events suggest otherwise. Abound Solar announced its bankruptcy and ceased operation last week. Another in an incredible list of solar manufacturing failures. The Abound Solar plant closing will take 125 jobs out of the American economy. Germany’s […]
Robots and Ethical Choices
The Economist in recent weeks has printed a series of articles about robots but this video about robo-ethics is particularly clear and worth a few minutes of your time. Or read the book by George Bekey and Patrick Lim, “Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents series)” from…
6,000 Job Ads for Robotics In May
During May 2012, 6,000 job ads for robotics were posted – a 29% year-over-year growth and twice the volume of similar ads in May 2010, reported Wanted Analytics, a Canadian research firm providing “business intelligence for the talent marketplace.” 33% of the job postings were for healthcare practitioners with a robotics skill set and Phoenix,…
Robots in Your Future
Sometimes a unique insight leads to actions that will impact the big picture. To get America Working Again, we need to find new ways to compete with low cost producers around the world. Emerging technology is leading us to new methods of producing goods at dramatically lower cost. At the recent Maker Faire gathering, Rodney […]
Liquid Robotics Joint Ventures with Oil & Gas Technology Provider Schlumberger
New company, Liquid Robotics Oil & Gas, will be headquartered in Houston,TX and will initially provide Wave Glider platforms for surveillance; seep/spill detection; and communications gateway services. Wave Gliders can operate offshore for up to a year without requiring a crew, fuel or a dedicated support vessel. “By teaming with Schlumberger, we can greatly accelerate…
Apple to invest $7 billion in robots
According to a story in Seeking Alphaª, Apple plans to purchase billions of dollars of industrial robots from Fanuc for placement within Foxconn’s factories in China. Neither Apple nor Foxconn have confirmed the piece. It takes 141 steps to make an iPhone and passes through 325 pairs of hands over 5 days. Although labor only…
Heartland Robotics Gets $30 million, a New Name and Provides an Outline of Their New Product
Rethink Robotics (formerly Heartland Robotics) announced that it has secured $30 million in Series C funding to launch the company’s new robot product, begin development of new product lines and expand sales, marketing and services operations. This latest round of funding brings the total raised by Heartland/Rethink to $62 million. Descriptors for their new product…
Invention; Made in the USA
Is the US a nation of inventors? Does anyone catalog how many new inventions are produced by each country, each year? I know there are websites that track new Patent filings, but many Patents are filed which never turn into products. So that is not a good measure for what I’m talking about. Is the […]
New Venture Fund Specifically for Service Robotic Startups
“We are at the start of a transformative period for robotics that requires a new breed of risk-taker to drive mass-market adoption,” says Dmitry Grishin, founder of Grishin Robotics. With a particular focus on already-working products with mass-market appeal, Grishin aims to facilitate the development of the robotics industry by injecting much-needed capital and providing…
Robot lawnmowers still a work in progress
Too expensive for most home use, not professional enough for industrial use, robotic lawnmowers have yet to become as commonplace as Roombas. But a new crop of consumer manufacturers is quietly making inroads by providing more bang for the buck. John Deere’s all-weather Tango E5, $2,500, can mow an area up to 20,000 sq ft,…
Some robotic stocks are defying the down markets
Stocks of industrial robot makers Adept, Denso, Yushin and Fanuc are doing well year-to-date as are service robot makers Swisslog, Technip, Sohgo Alsok, Thermo Fisher, Perkin Elmer and Accuray. Ancillary businesses to the robotics industry bucking the trend include IsraVision, Jenoptik, Harmonic Drive (JP), Keyence and Cimetrix. Surprisingly, defense conglomerates with a robotics component like…
Time, Control and Cost Efficiency
In motion control, more so than any other discipline in the field of control, time is the most critical value to understand. There is an incredible amount of information hidden in what is probably the most obvious and yet, least questioned aspect of motion and motor control. How much time do we have to make […]
First Kiva Systems and now Intelligrated! Who’s Next?
What is it about automated robotic warehousing? Amazon just acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million and now Permira, a European private equity firm, announced that it was acquiring Intelligrated for an amount in excess of $500 million! The deal is expected to close after the summer. Intelligrated designs, manufactures, and/or integrates and installs complete material…
Four approaches by industrial robot makers to transition to service robotics
KUKA launched a new lightweight and sensitive arm that can be affixed to a tabletop. YASKAWA MOTOMAN has an ambitious and well-thought-out plan to provide human assist robots. ADEPT is acquiring mobility and food-processing tech to add capabilities. BOSCH is buying, partnering and investing in new tech while making their own robots as backup. Disruptive…
Companies Transitioning from Industrial to Service Robots
A version of this post originally appeared on Singularity Hub, June 6, 2012. By Frank Tobe, Editor and Publisher The Robot Report Robot manufacturers are beginning to shift theirattention from industrial to service robots. The robotics industry is on the cusp of a major transformation. Today’s factory robots are solitary precision instruments, mimicking the repertoire…
Flexible, Intelligent Robotics Debuted In Materials Handling Marketplace
Symbotic, formerly CasePick Systems, is providing mobile robots that grab closed boxes of goods and brings them to a pallet-loading robot. Different from Kiva Systems, recently acquired by Amazon, which moves racks of open boxes to an order-picker who removes items and packs them into shipping boxes. Vetex and Yaskawa Motoman will soon be offering…
Hansen Medical Receives FDA Clearance for it’s Magellan Robotic System
The Magellan Robotic System offers simultaneous and independent distal tip control of a catheter and a sheath as well as robotic manipulation of standard guidewires, all with incredible stability. This leads to faster, easier, and safer vessel navigation, which may result in less vessel trauma, reduced patient healing time, faster, more predictable procedures, and an…
Future Perfect
The future is what we make it. This phrase has been variously attributed to the Terminator movie. Notwithstanding the source, there is some truth. The future is what we make it to be through our actions. One of our unique gifts is inventing, although it is often referred to as tool making. It is in […]
What’s happening to the big industrial robot stocks?
Compared to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is back to where it started the year, the big four robot manufacturers are down 20% year to date. Yet 2011 robot sales were great (see story below). And prospects for 2012 sales were expected to be just as good. Particularly in Asia. So why are these…
Teledyne Technologies Acquires BlueView
BlueView Technologies, a provider of underwater vision systems for many underwater robotics providers, announced that it would be acquired by Teledyne effective in July. BlueView delivers instrumentation for underwater vision, monitoring, survey, detection and navigation and has pioneered new technologies in compact forward-looking imaging sonar, microbathymetry systems and 3D scanning sonar. Teledyne RD Instruments, itself…
2012 IERA Invention and Entrepreneurship Awarded to RoboCoaster and Universal Robots
“The important advancement in safe robots for the entertainment industry by RoboCoaster and the development of a new generation of simple robots for SME's by Universal Robots not only represent positive steps forward for the robotics industry but also reflect businesses that have successfully translated technology into commercial success.” Runners-up included HiBot's Expliner robot for…