Best ever Robot Block Party!
Here are some of the reads I've enjoyed this week or so.
I probably don’t need to share Robot Block Party pics because it looked like everyone I know in robotics was there in person! We had 45 exhibitors or demos and more than 2000 people attended through the day.
NBC’s coverage: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/14th-annual-robot-block-party-shows-off-new-tech-in-oakland/3201185/
Quick Reads:
Are robot waiters the future? Some restaurants think so - Washington Post
Robotics data startup led by former Amazon drone engineers emerges from stealth, raises $4.8M - Geekwire
Origami-Inspired Robots Can Sense, Analyze and Act in Challenging Environments - UCLA
Top 10 robotics stories of March 2023 - The Robot Report
Robotic flies to swarm 24/7 in RoboHouse - Robohub
Covariant raises $75M for robotic picking technology - The Robot Report
Databricks, a company specializing in data lakehouse technology, announced on Tuesday a new platform designed for the manufacturing industry.
The Call to Halt ‘Dangerous’ AI Research Ignores a Simple Truth - Wired
Three ways AI Chatbots are a security disaster - MIT Technology Review
Agility’s Latest Digit Robot Prepares for Its First Job - IEEE Spectrum
Why the startup accelerator is failing robotics - VentureBeat
https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1643064696617017344
https://twitter.com/MarwaEldiwiny/status/1643284339885740033
Events:
Author Event with Dr. Sven Beiker
The Mobility Diaries: Connecting the Milestones of Innovation Leading to ACES
April 13th at Stanford Research Center
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/author-event-with-dr-sven-beiker-tickets-575687134717
MANUFACTURING FOR GROWTH
Manufacturing continues to grow at a rapid rate. Stay ahead of the curve at The MFG Meeting this April. The MFG Meeting is the ultimate gathering of manufacturing technology minds, bringing together a community of solutions and solvers. Learn how to keep pace with growing demand, make lifelong connections, and see what opportunities lie on the horizon.
https://events.amtonline.org/event/e739c008-09c1-4077-ab7d-adc3adc7989f/summary
The Embedded Vision Summit
https://embeddedvisionsummit.com/attend/
Robotics Summit and Expo - save 25% with SVR25
https://www.roboticssummit.com/
Deeper Reads:
The Challenges of Growth: where startups struggle and how to fix them
Elizabeth Yin
Although I invest in a lot of pre-revenue startups, a stage where I see most companies get stuck is the pre-series A stage. There are two primary ways that companies tend to get stuck.
Feminist Human-Robot Interaction: Disentangling Power
Katie Winkle
2+ years of hard (but enjoyable!) work & conversation across HRI / HCI / interaction design & gender studies went into this paper - we hope it makes feminist scholarship (and it’s relevance to HRI) a bit more accessible to HRI researchers/developers. Thrilled we got best paper !!
https://twitter.com/KatieJWinkle/status/1642767543164194820
Behind the curtain: what it feels like to work in AI right now
Fear, FOMO, and the scientific exodus driven by ChatGPT
Every single person I know working in AI these days (in both the academy and industry) has been sparked by the ChatGPT moment. The first iPhone moment of AI. Working in this environment is extremely straining, for a plethora of reasons — burnout, ambition, noise, influencers, financial upside, ethical worries, and more.
Tortoise’s Dmitry Shevelenko: Consumers Thought They Could Buy Something From the Robot
A wide-ranging interview on macro fundraising challenges, how to sell to Walmart, the vaunted "double pivot" and more
With the autonomous delivery industry in a momentous state of transition, I’m sitting down with execs from the leading PDD players to gather their insights into the challenges facing the sector. Summing up their thoughts on fundraising, sales, regulation, and more - we’re already starting to see some interesting trends emerge.
Taking a Peep at America's Factory Boom
Japan, Mexico, and the USA brace for change in their manufacturing sectors amidst uncertainty. On-demand manufacturing platforms and digital twins remain hot as supply chains shortages remain.
Perhaps, to better handle the shortages and uncertainty companies are responding to incentives and reshoring production. This trend is sending construction spending for manufacturing facilities soaring in the United States.