In Episode 154 of The Robot Report Podcast, Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman discuss the news of the week.

Stratom President and CEO Mark Gordon joins us today on the podcast. Stratom is a military contractor that makes robots for various divisions of the US armed forces. The company has also expanded to the commercial sector with its field robotics solutions, including applications such as mining and construction.

Listen in as our friend of the show Aaron Prather, from ASTM, sits down with Meghan Ziemba of Mavens of Manufacturing to continue our interview series from the Robotics Summit this spring.

Show timeline

• 8:18: News
• 20:08: Interview with Mark Gordon, President and CEO of Stratom, along with Zach Savit, Stratom’s Senior Manager of Business Development.
• 49:00: Interview by Meghan Ziemba, Mavens of Manufacturing, with Aaron Prather, from ASTM International.

In the news this week

1. Waymo updates software after robotaxi drives into telephone pole
   • Waymo is issuing a voluntary software recall for all of its 672 robotaxis after one autonomously drove into a telephone pole in Phoenix, Ariz. last month. This is Waymo’s second-ever recall. The Verge first reported the new software recall. During the incident, which took place on May 21, an empty Waymo vehicle was driving to pick up a passenger. To get there, it drove through an alley lined on both sides by wooden telephone poles that were level with the road, not up on a curb. The road had longitudinal yellow striping on both sides to indicate the path for vehicles. As the vehicle pulled over, it struck one of the poles at a speed of 8 MPH, sustaining some damage. Waymo says no passengers or bystanders were hurt.
2. Robot sales in North America dip 6% in Q1
   • A3 said robot sales in North America were down 6% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. Companies purchased 8,582 robots from January through March for a total of $494 million, A3 said. In Q1 2023, North American companies ordered 9,168 units for a total of $597 million.
   • North American robot orders declined by 30% in 2023 after two years of record sales.
   • North American companies purchased 31,159 robots in 2023, compared with 44,196 ordered in 2022 and 39,708 in 2021. A3 attributed the 2023 slowdown to “obvious issues” such as a slow U.S. economy, higher interest rates, and even the over-purchasing of robots in 2022 from supply chain concerns.
   • Robot sales to non-automotive companies increase: While overall orders decreased during Q1 2024, orders from non-automotive companies grew 16% over Q1 2023, A3 said. Non-automotive customers ordered 4,096 robots in Q1 2024, which accounted for 48% of total orders.
3. Leading tractor manufacturers hosting annual hackathon
   • John Deere, CNHI, and AGCO, held the annual CyberTractor Challenge. This event encourages college students to try to breach the security of both the firms’ cloud-based solutions and physical hardware such as tractors, smart tools, and different IoT devices. JD has done this for the last two years, this year they formed a non-profit organization with their competitors CNHI and Agco and are running this as a non-proprietary event. This is an innovative example of how hackathons can improve the product, while also enabling outreach to a new generation of engineers, it’s a great idea.

Links from the show:

Video: Humanoid chauffeur put in the driving seat for robotaxi future

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In Episode 153 of The Robot Report Podcast, editors Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman discuss the news of the week. Our featured guest on the show this week is Sankalp Arora, co-founder and CEO of Gather AI. We catch up with Sankalp to learn how his company‘s drone inventory management product is evolving.

The second featured interview is with Jake Hall, the “Manufacturing Millennial,” and Scott Sizemore, director of commercial marketing at motor provider ElectroCraft.

Show timeline

• 5:45: News
• 25:20: Interview with Sankalp Arora, co-founder and CEO of Gather AI
• 58:59: Interview by Jake Hall, the Manufacturing Millennial, with Scott Sizemore, director of commercial marketing at ElectroCraft

Register now.

In the news this week

1. Investor Dean Drako acquires Cobalt Robotics
   • Cobalt Robotics has been acquired by investor Dean Drako, and the name of the security robot firm has been changed to Cobalt AI to more accurately represent the company’s direction and the products it offers.
   • Drako is the founder and CEO of Eagle Eye Networks, in addition to a number of other enterprises and side projects. Cobalt AI fits closest to the Eagle Eye Smart Video Surveillance portfolio.
2. Waymo expands its service area 
   • Robotaxi developer Waymo announced that it’s expanding its service area in Phoenix. The company has added 90 square miles to what was already its largest service area in Metro Phoenix. Waymo’s service now covers 315 square miles of the Valley.
   • In addition, Zoox announced that it will begin testing in Austin and Miami, the fourth and fifth public testing locations for the Amazon subsidiary.
3. OpenAI is restarting its robotics research group
   • OpenAI, which is best known for ChatGPT, is restarting its robotics research group. The San Francisco-based company has been a pioneer in generative artificial intelligence and is returning to robotics after a three-year break.
   • The reboot comes after the company shut down its robotics group in July 2021. That shutdown was prior to all of the interest in generative AI after OpenAI released ChatGPT to the world.
4. See this disc golf disc-throwing robot:

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In Episode 152 of The Robot Report Podcast, editors Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman discuss the news of the week. Our featured guest on the show this week is Rajat Bhageria, founder and CEO of Chef Robotics.

Bhageria takes us through the inception of the company and how he has broken down the various workflows in the commercial kitchen. Chef Robotics is focused on food manufacturing, deploying automation to the tasks of filling ready-to-cook, prepared meals with individual food items.

The second feature on the show today is an interview hosted by Meaghan Ziemba, host of Mavens of Manufacturing and Joyce Sidopoulos, co-founder and chief of operations at MassRobotics. This interview occurred live at the 2024 Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston.

Ziemba and Sidopoulos discuss the Women in Robotics Breakfast at the Robotics Summit and the MassRobotics Jumpstart program. which supports local high school girls to discover a career in high tech and robotics. They also chat about how MassRobotics is supporting the regional robotics startup ecosystem.

Show timeline

• 10:02: News
• 23:04: Interview with Rajat Bhageria, founder and CEO of Chef Robotics
• 1:07:23: Interview by Meaghan Ziemba, host of Mavens of Manufacturing, and Joyce Sidopoulos, co-founder and chief of operations at MassRobotics

Register now.

In the news this week

1. 1. 1. Robotics investments top $466M in April 2024
         • Robotics investments reached at least $466 million in April 2024, the result of 36 funding rounds. The April investments figure lagged recent months and was the smallest amount since November 2023. Last month’s investment total was significantly less than the trailing 12-month average of $1.1 billion.
         • Collaborative Robotics’ $100 million Series B round was April’s largest investment. As its name implies, the California-based firm is developing collaborative robots and enabling software for their use. China’s Rokae, a provider of collaborative and industrial robots, secured $70 million in April.
         • As with previous months, companies located in the U.S. and China received the largest funding amounts, $239 million and $115 million, respectively. Companies based in the U.S. (14) and China (9) also received the majority of the round.
      2. Sonair sensor launch
         • The Norwegian-based sensor company decloaked this week to announce the availability of evaluation kits for its new ultrasonic sensor.
         • Sonair is attempting to disintermediate the safety lidar market with a new obstacle-detecting sensor.
      3. Tangram Vision creates lidar comparison tool
         • If you’re searching for a lidar sensor to add to your robot, Tangram Vision wants to make your evaluation process simpler. The startup, which is building software and hardware for robotic perception, launched an interactive tool called “Spinning LiDAR Visualizer” that lets users compare spinning lidar models.
         • Users can compare 28 sensors from leading manufacturers such as Hesai, Ouster, Quanergy, RoboSense, and Velodyne. The visualizer allows them to select one or two sensors to analyze and compare maximum range, range at 10% reflectivity, angular resolution, and field of view. You can click and drag for different viewpoints, embed the tool somewhere else, or even modify it on GitLab.

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The post RBR50 winners Agility Robotics, Brightpick live from Robotics Summit appeared first on The Robot Report.

In this episode, we talk to Matt Casella from Richtech Robotics about the Adam bartending robot, and then to Chris Padwick from John Deere about creating vision models for spraying weeds in the field.

Both interviews occurred during NVIDIA’s GTC event last month, and both companies use NVIDIA technology in their AI-powered robots.

Show timeline

• 23:54: Interview with Matt Casella, President of Richtech Robotics
• 44:14: Interview with Chris Padwick, director of machine vision learning, from John Deere Autonomous Solutions

News from this week

Boston Dynamics unveils electric Atlas humanoid robot

On Tuesday, Boston Dynamics retired the previous version of Atlas after about 15 years of development. It paved the way for numerous other humanoid robots.

As you have probably seen on YouTube, Atlas was surprisingly agile, given its hydraulics and bulk. In fact, Atlas won an RBR50 award for its demonstration of running and delivering tools at a simulated construction site at the company’s headquarters in Waltham, Mass.

At the same time, the company has not been shy about showing the many falls and missteps on the way to increasingly robust locomotion and dexterous manipulation.

On Wednesday, Boston Dynamics announced a new, all-electric version intended for eventual commercial use. 

Mentee Robotics decloaks with its own AI-powered humanoid

Perhaps overshadowed by Boston Dynamics’ announcement the same day, Mentee Robotics came out of stealth and unveiled its first bipedal humanoid robot prototype. A team with experience in machine, computer vision, and other fields founded the Herzliya, Israel-based company in 2022.

Mentee Robotics said its AI-powered robot will understand natural-language commands and be based on a simulation-to-reality model. The company acknowledged that more work is to be done and said it is aiming for the household and warehouse markets. Like Boston Dynamics, it is aiming to have more robots to show in 2025.

Locus Robotics surpasses 3B picks mere months after last milestone

Locus Robotics Corp. this week said it has surpassed 3 billion total picks across its global customer deployments. The Wilmington, Mass.-based company reached this milestone just 33 weeks after it recorded its 2 billionth pick.

Locus claimed that the achievement underscores its continued rapid growth and solidifies its position as a leader in AI-powered robots for the warehouse.

California committee passes AV ban

On Wednesday, the California Senate Committee on Local Government passed legislation allowing local municipalities to ban and tax autonomous vehicle (AV) deployment.

Last year was one of California’s deadliest for roadway fatalities, largely because of human behaviors including distracted driving, drunk driving, and speeding. The legislation by Sen. Dave Cortese takes control away from state-level agencies like the DMV and California Public Utilities Commission, which have approved the rollout of AVs.

The post From the barn to the bar: AI powered robots appeared first on The Robot Report.

This week, we announced the honorees for the 2024 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards. On the podcast episode this week, the entire The Robot Report editorial staff brings its opinions, observations, and highlights of the 2024 awards program. Host Steve Crowe discusses the awards with editors Mike Oitzman, Eugene Demaitre, and Brianna Wessling.

Listen as the editors discusses some of their favorite robotics companies and products from this cohort of honorees. You’ll learn what impressed the editors about several of the winners and what’s notable in this year’s program.

Digit named Robot of the Year

2023 was the year of humanoids, and Agility Robotics has taken an early lead with commercial trials. The company’s Digit humanoid stole the show at ProMAT, where it demonstrated its ability to pick up totes from a shelf, walk over to a conveyor, and place the totes onto the conveyor.

Autopicker wins Application of the Year

Cincinnati-based Brightpick, which spun out of Photoneo, was named the inaugural Application of the Year winner. In 2023, Brightpick unveiled Autopicker, which it said is the first commercially available AMR that can pick and consolidate orders directly in warehouse aisles.

Electric Sheep is Startup of the Year

San Francisco-based Electric Sheep’s unique business model allows it to bring in revenue as it takes its time deploying its technology. This business model led to it being named Startup of the Year.

Note that the rules for the RBR50 state that innovations have to be announced within the calendar year. Keep that in mind as your organization plans its product roadmap, and be sure to submit your nomination the next iteration of the RBR50 later this year.

Come celebrate at the 2024 RBR50 Gala

We introduced three new categories in 2024 – Robot of the Year, Application of the Year, and Startup of the Year – and will be holding the inaugural RBR50 Gala on May 1 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the end of Day 1 of the Robotics Summit & Expo.

The gala offers a chance to connect with the world’s leading robotics innovators. It’s also an evening of celebration to honor leading roboticists and their impressive achievements.

Tickets to the gala are available through Wednesday, April 17.

Learn from Agility Robotics, Amazon, Disney, Teradyne and many more.

The post Inside the 2024 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards appeared first on The Robot Report.

Our featured guest on the show this week is Jamie Lee, managing partner at Tamarack Global. Tamarack Global emerged on our radar last month as one of the investors who participated in the recent Series B funding round for Figure AI.

After meeting Lee for research for those news stories, we invited him to come onto the podcast and share his investment thesis and the reasons why they are so bullish about humanoids, Figure AI, and especially founder and CEO Brett Adcock.

The heart of Tamarack’s investment philosophy centers around investing in strong leaders who hire strong teams and build solutions for very large markets. But you’ll also learn about Jamie’s pragmatic philosophy for evaluating proposals and some of the danger signals that he looks for when evaluating a potential investment.

News from the week

Viam raised $45 million in Series B funding

Viam has been quiet after all of the news last year, but Viam is building a modular, interoperable, and open-source software platform that works across all hardware and any fleet of machines. Viam stated that the funding will enable it to accelerate partnerships, drive commercial innovation, and further develop its platform.

Accenture announced an investment in Sanctuary AI

Sanctuary is building humanoids with embodied intelligence and they’ve always tightly focused on hand-eye coordination and manipulation over the bipedal walking aspects of humanoid robots. The investment in Sanctuary is the latest move by Accenture to build out a robotics strategy.

In January 2024, Accenture and Mujin created a joint venture to help bring robotics to the manufacturing and logistics industries. Called Accenture Alpha Automation, the new venture is owned 70% by Accenture and 30% by Mujin. The new company, called Accenture Alpha Automation, combines Mujin’s industrial robotics expertise with Accenture’s digital engineering and manufacturing service, Industry X.

Sanctuary has published a series of videos of its robots “doing stuff” on YouTube. These videos illustrate the development path of the two-armed humanoid as well as the AI behind the robots’ decision-making.

NYC takes steps to allow robotaxis in NYC

New York took its first steps towards allowing robotaxis this week and announced new safety requirements and permitting guidelines for companies looking to test their self-driving cars on public roads. 

Even with the city’s newfound interest in testing, autonomous vehicle (AV) commercialization in New York is difficult. It is one of the hardest cities for AVs to navigate due to its pedestrian-filled streets, unpredictable vehicle traffic, and sensor-disrupting bright lights.

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The Robot Report editorial director Eugene Demaitre recently returned from the R-24 international robotics event in Odense, Denmark. From this trip, he immediately headed out to San Jose, Calif., to attend NVIDIA GTC 2024 with senior editor Mike Oitzman.

In this episode, Gene and Mike talk about what Gene saw and learned during his latest visit to Odense. From there, the co-hosts discuss their experiences at the GTC event, and all of the interesting sessions on artificial intelligence and robotics, NVIDIA’s product announcements for robotics, and the demonstrations by vendors that exhibited on the busy show floor.

R-24: Robots, Automation, and Drones

• Odense Robotics is one of the largest robotics clusters in the world, with 350 members across Denmark, about half of which are in the Odense area.
• It employs about 18,000 people, with plans to double that over the next decade. Local leaders attributed that to a culture of collaboration.
• Among the interesting things the international delegations saw around R-24 was Odense Port, which is now building giant wind turbines in addition to maintaining container ships.
• They also visited the drone test center at the Hans Christian Andersen Airport; the Danish Technological Institute, which hosts the Odense Robotics Startup Fund; and the Maersk-McKinney Moller Institute at the University of Southern Denmark, as well as Universal Robots headquarters.
• Odense is also hosting ROSCon later this year.

Highlights from NVIDIA GTC 2024

In addition to CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote, here are some highlights from NVIDIA‘s latest GPU Technology Conference:

New foundation for humanoid robotics

The big news from the robotics side of the house was that NVIDIA launched a new general-purpose foundation model for humanoid robots called Project GR00T. This new model is designed to bring robotics and embodied AI together while enabling the robots to understand natural language and emulate movements by observing human actions.

GR00T uses the new Jetson Thor

As part of its robotics announcements, NVIDIA unveiled Jetson Thor for humanoid robots, based on the NVIDIA Thor system-on-a-chip (SoC). Significant upgrades to the NVIDIA Isaac robotics platform include generative AI foundation models and tools for simulation and AI workflow infrastructure.

The Thor SoC includes a next-generation GPU based on NVIDIA Blackwell architecture with a transformer engine delivering 800 teraflops of 8-bit floating-point AI performance. With an integrated functional safety processor, a high-performance CPU cluster, and 100GB of Ethernet bandwidth, it can simplify design and integration efforts, claimed the company.

NVIDIA updates Isaac simulation platform

The Isaac tools that GR00T uses are capable of creating new foundation models for any robot embodiment in any environment, according to NVIDIA. Among these tools are Isaac Lab for reinforcement learning, and OSMO, a compute orchestration service.

NVIDIA DRIVE Thor for robot axis

The company also announced NVIDIA DRIVE Thor, which now supersedes NVIDIA DRIVE Orin as a SoC for autonomous driving applications.

Other notable sessions (worth watching the replays):

• Geordie Rose, CEO of Sanctuary: “Using Omniverse to generate first-person experiential data for humanoid robots”
• Aaron Saunders, chief technology officer of Boston Dynamics: “Deploying AI in real-world robots”
• Vincent Vanhouke, senior director of robotics at Google Deepmind: “Robotics in the age of GenAI”

Interesting robots seen at GTC24:

• Agility DIGIT (static)
• Apptronik Apollo (static)
• Unitree H1
• 1X Eve
• Fourier Analysis – GR1
• Disney BD-X droids
• ANYbotics ANYmal
• Enchanted Tools Mirokai
• Richtech Robotics ADAM

The post GTC 2024 and R-24 recap appeared first on The Robot Report.

Host Steve Crowe attended MODEX 2024 in Atlanta GA. In this episode, we talk about the innovative robotics solutions that he experienced at the show and capture his feedback on what was happening during the week, and some of the trends for robotics and automation in the warehouse and logistics space.

In the news this week

• Apptonik at Mercedes Benz
  • Apptronik announced that leading automotive brand Mercedes-Benz is testing its Apollo humanoid robot. As part of the agreement, Apptronik and Mercedes-Benz will collaborate on identifying applications for Apollo in automotive settings.
• Waymo starts fully driverless testing in LA
  • Waymo announced in October that LA would be its next ride-hailing city, after rolling out its services in San Francisco, Phoenix, and the Phoenix suburbs.
• Zoox expands services in Las Vegas
  • Still only serving employees and select beta customers while on a path to eventually open to the public.

The post MODEX 2024 Recap appeared first on The Robot Report.

Nag Murty, CEO and cofounder of Electric Sheep, and Michael Laskey, CTO of Electric Sheep join the show this week to discuss how Electric Sheep is disrupting the commercial landscaping industry with autonomous mobile robots and a unique business model. The company is leveraging AI to enable autonomous mowers to cut the grass while simplifying the deployment process in the field.
Electric Sheep is also vertically integrating the market segment through the acquisition of commercial landscaping businesses, then training the field workforce and integrating the autonomous mowers in the daily workflow for the field teams while learning and adapting the product.

Episode Timeline

18:10   Interview with Electric Sheep CEO and cofounder Nag Murty, along with CTO Michael Laskey.

In the news this week

• The January investment report is out and robotics companies raised $578M in January 2024.
  • Robotics investments totaled $578 million in January 2024 as the result of 46 funding rounds. This figure was substantially lower than the trailing twelve-month average, but in line with January 2023’s figure of $523 million.
  • The largest robotics investment in January 2024 was a $100 million round secured by Norway-based 1X, a developer of humanoids (See Table 1 below). Chinese humanoid developer Robot Era raised $14 million in February.
  • Makers of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for agricultural operations were well represented among February’s robotics investments. Examples include Bluewhite ($39 million), Burro ($24 million), Saga Robotics ($11.5 million), farm-ng ($10M), and Ant Robotics ($2 million).
  • Companies based in the United States raised $154 million in January 2024, while Norway, buoyed by the $100 million 1X investment, placed third among countries with $113 million in funding.
• Anyware Robotics announces new add-on conveyor for Pixmo unloading robots
  • The patent-pending articulating conveyor simplifies
• Waymo robotaxis approved for fared rides in LA, also significantly expanded operating area around the SF peninsula, including a reported route to the airport.
  • Also launches fully driverless rides for employees in Austin; will begin shuttling employees around 43 square miles of the Texas capital.
• Veteran tech exec Peggy Johnson named Agility Robotics CEO
  • Agility Robotics co-founder Damion Shelton has served as CEO since the company’s founding in 2015. Shelton will now be the company’s president and part of Johnson’s leadership team.

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Eric Adamson, CEO and co-founder of Tortuga, joins us in this episode to discuss agricultural robotics. Tortuga is one of the agtech companies leading the charge to transform greenhouse farming with their autonomous harvesting robots. Eric discusses the difficulties and successes of developing robots for use in greenhouses, shedding light on the processes involved in harvesting strawberries, grapes, and tomatoes. This episode offers an intriguing look into how technology and agriculture are influencing the future of food production, from overcoming design limits to investigating creative alternatives.

Episode Timeline

26:15   Interview with Eric Adamson, from Tortuga AgTech

In the news this week

• • Figure AI raises whopping $675M to commercialize humanoids
    • With the Series B funding, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company is now valued at $2.6 billion. Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, NVIDIA, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), Parkway Venture Capital, Intel Capital, Align Ventures, and ARK Invest were among the investors. Qatalyst Partners provided strategic and financial advice to Figure.
    • Figure AI said it will work with OpenAI on the next generation of AI models for humanoids. This will be done by combining OpenAI’s language research with Figure’s robotics hardware and software expertise.
    • Figure said it will use Microsoft Azure for AI training, storage, and servers.
    • This is shot across the bow for Tesla and the Optimus team, but it really adds fuel the race to commercialize humanoids.
  • Electric Sheep Robotics launched Verdie, a new robot using its proprietary artificial intelligence and software.
    • Electric Sheep aims to be the first large-scale outdoor maintenance company powered by AI and robotics.
    • Verdie uses AI to understand the lawns around them and efficiently care for them, said Electric Sheep. Based on recent advances in generative AI, ES1 is a learned-world model that enables reasoning and planning for both robots.
  • One more update: On last week’s show, the Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus had just successfully landed on the moon, but what we didn’t know at the time was that it tipped over in the final moments of the landing procedure.
    • It was supposed to survive for 14 days, before the lunar night, but it only lasted a week, and stopped transmitting yesterday.

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On the latest episode of The Robot Report Podcast, we chat with Thomas Tang, CEO and co-founder of Anyware Robotics. Anyware Robotics is launching an autonomous trailer unloading solution, that will make its debut at MODEX 2024.

The mechanism consists of a mobile manipulator that includes a Fanuc CRX 25iA cobot mounted on top of a custom-built, omnidirectional AMR base. Visitors to the upcoming MODEX show will be able to see the Pixmo robot demo live in the Anyware Robotics booth.

The Pixmo mobile manipulator from Anyware Robotics uses a vacuum gripper and vision guidance to acquire boxes from the container. | Credit: Anyware Robotics

In this episode, we also catch up with Matt Wicks, Sr Director and robotics automation business leader with Zebra Technology. Matt is responsible for the Fetch Robotics products at Zebra, and brings us up to speed on the Fetch AMR portfolio.

Episode Timeline

18:00   Interview with Thomas Tang, CEO and co-founder, of Anyware Robotics

38:30   Interview with Matt Wicks, Sr Director and robotics automation business leader with Zebra Technology.

In the news this week

• ABB – Marc Segura blog post on the State of Robotics at ABB
  • Article summary:
    • The continued development of AI-powered robotics is the latest chapter in ABB’s fifty-year story of robotic innovation that began in 1974 with the sale of the world’s first commercial all-electric robot, the IRB 6.
    • ABB is bullish on the future of robotics that use AI
    • Marc believes that AI will help close the skills and knowledge gap that exists between new robotics users and make robotics useful
• Hippo Harvest, a Fetch Robotics OEM partner, brings in $21M to scale automated greenhouse operations.
  • This is an innovative use case that leverages AMRs to automate the movement of trays of plants within a greenhouse.

The post Warehouse automation update with Fetch Robotics and Anyware Robotics appeared first on The Robot Report.

On the latest episode of The Robot Report Podcast, we chat with Dr. Aaron Ames, professor of mechanical and civil engineering and control and dynamical systems at CalTech and co-founder of a new robotics company called 3Laws Robotics.

Listen to co-host Mike Oitzman’s discussion with Ames about the state of bipedal robotics He then gets a short history lesson about the evolution of humanoid robots and the state of the art today. Then dive into how 3Laws Robotics is bringing new safety software technologies to market to help every robot manufacturer deliver safer motion.

Learn more about legged robots and 3Laws

• Dr. Aaron Ames’ TedX talk about bipedal robotics.
• Learn more about 3Laws Robotics: https://www.3lawsrobotics.io/

In the news this week

In 2023, North American companies purchased 31,159 robots, compared with 44,196 ordered in 2022 and 39,708 in 2021, according to the Association for Advancing Automation (A3). Purchases were down 30% from 2022 to 2023, it said.

The 2023 robot orders were divided almost equally among automotive and non-automotive companies. This represented a 34% drop in sales to automotive OEMs and automotive suppliers over 2022 and a 25% total decrease in all other industries, said A3.

However, the last three months of the year saw an increase of 20% in automotive — both OEM and components — and in metals, electronics, plastics, and the “all other industries” category over Q3 2023. The “all other industries” category includes companies in areas such as construction, hospitality, and agriculture, which are newer to robotics, said A3.

“While we expect to see automotive orders rise again, there’s little doubt that orders will increase from all non-automotive industries as they recognize how robots can help them overcome their unique challenges,” Jeff Burnstein, president of A3, told The Robot Report. “I think the economy has more of an impact on robot sales than geopolitical issues.”

In addition, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) this week said it expects trends such as AI, humanoid robots, and digitalization to boost the robotics industry.

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On the show this week cohosts Mike Oitzman and Gene Demaitre have a conversation with Zipline CTO and co-founder Keenan Wyrobek about the state of the company. We also get to learn more details about the design of the new Zip delivery “Droid” with lead droid engineer, Stephen Killian.

Check out the Mark Rober YouTube video, where Mark goes to Uganda to visit the Zipline launch facility.

In The News this week

• New Atlas video from Boston Dynamics
  • Video shows Atlas performing tasks moving heavy automotive struts
  • Atlas moves the struts from a vertical pallet onto a vertical storage in a flow cart.
• The bad news continues for autonomous vehicles
  • Cruise and Motional see funding slashed
  • GM-backed Cruise will see its budget cut by $1 billion and one of Motional’s two leading backers will no longer fund the company.
  • Autonomous vehicles drove more than 9M miles in California in 2023
• Agtech startup Small Robot Company shutting down
  • Every startup founder’s nightmare: the company couldn’t secure the funding in time to keep the company afloat.

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