Mirror mirror on the wall, which is the best walking robot of all?
tldr: Digit from Agility Robotics
Some highlights from Xponential in Denver and the Robotics Summit in Boston were picking up some tips in how to put robotics on the policy agenda from Colorado Representative Anthony Hartsook, and hearing a couple of great talks in Boston.
Agility Robotics CTO and Cofounder Jonathan Hurst came after the keynote by Marc Raibert from Boston Dynamics but nonetheless delivered a masterclass in legged robotics, keeping us all riveted. Also worth mentioning, Ryan Gariepy’s talk (from Clearpath Robotics, Otto Motors etc) on how to build robots as products and where we're at in the various stages of robotics revolutions, Adrian MacNeil’s talk (Foxglove Robotics) on data challenges and strategies for robotics, and Ted Larson’s talk (Ologic) on Guerilla Product Development for Robotics.
I’ve already transcribed Ted’s talk for our IEEE RAS series on “DeMystifying Manufacturing for Deep Tech and Robotics Startups” if you’d like a copy. And ping me if you’d like me to share the not very great quality audio recordings I took of the other talks - particularly if you’d like to finish the transcription and turn them into articles!
Quick Reads:
Andra’s 5 Laws of Robotics (not Asimov’s) and what we can do about AI and robotics - Andra Keay at Silicon Valley Robotics
China’s Troubles Present a Moment for North America - Sean Randolph in San Francisco Business Times
SOCOM wants new industry pitches to connect autonomous tech - Todd South at Defense News
Saturday afternoon project: take action in the physical world with chatGPT - Jack Damon at Twitter
Autonomous delivery startup Nuro to restructure, pause commercial expansion -Kirsten Korosec at TechCrunch
A New Robot Blacksmith May Help the Air Force Churn Out Aircraft Spare Parts -David Roza at Air and Space Forces
Quantifying ChatGPT’s gender bias - SAYASH KAPOOR AND ARVIND NARAYANAN at AI Snake Oil
Four Takeaways From Google’s Big AI Event - Jon Victor at The Information
What You're Getting All Wrong about the Indy Autonomous Challenge - CHRIS LANGRIL at AutoWeek
OTTO Motors Makes Major Strides for Interoperability Standard VDA5050 - Jess Blenkarn at BusinessWire
India’s Robot Boom Hits All-Time High – IFR Reports -Carsten Heer at BusinessWire
OSARO Targets Fast-Growing Subscription Market with AI-Powered Kitting Robots - Tim Cox | ZingPR for OSARO at BusinessWire
Flexiv, Cardinal Machine Provide Adaptive Robots to Combat Labor - Automation
No, this robot didn't collapse from exhaustion after 'a long day's work' - Lise Kiennemann at Observers
NASA selects 12 companies to collaborate on technology development - ERIC BROTHERS at Aero Space Manufacturing and Design
What if AI could rebuild the middle class? - Greg Rosalsky at NPR.org
Amazon Has a New Way to Get You Your Order (It's a Little Scary) - Thomas Lee at The Street
A Pizza-Making Robot Will Soon Be at Work at a Frisco Walmart - DAVID SEELEY at Dallas Innovates
Open-source LLMs vs big tech - BEN DICKSON at BDTechTalks |Substack
Deep Tech Foundations - Digits to Dollars
NASA developing snake-like robot to search for life on one of Saturn's moons - Greg Wehner at Yahoo Finance!
From Jack Damon or 1nternetjack at Viam - connecting ChatGPT to a robot:
Saturday afternoon project: take action in the physical world with chatGPT Built a proof of concept plug-in that controls a robotic rover “do a dance. don’t go further than 50cm from the start”
Out of Stealth:
Pioneering magnetic levitation for logistics - USPOSITRONIX - also…
Kat here, with Alphabet’s robotics company, Intrinsic. Hope you’re well!
I’m reaching out because we’re holding our first-ever product keynote on Monday, May 15th at 9:00am PT. Since spinning out of Google X, Intrinsic has been pretty quiet about our plans. That’s changing Monday when we’ll announce our first product and our first industry partner. Our ultimate goal is to make it possible to build real-world robotic applications the way software developers build smartphone applications – and vastly expand the usefulness of robots in industrial and business settings.
If you’re interested in joining the keynote, you can register to watch it virtually here. I’ll also share some materials on Monday that summarize what we announced, as well as some courtesy media assets for use.
I hope you can join us on Monday at 9:00am PT. If you have any questions in the meantime, please let me know!
Robotics Events:
May 19 2-5pm - Robotics Technical Network in SF - Silicon Valley Robotics
May 19 6-8pm - Founders & Funders Network in SF - Silicon Valley Robotics
May 22-24 - Embedded Vision Summit in Santa Clara - Embedded Vision Alliance
including: May 23 Women in Vision Reception - Embedded Vision alliance
discount code - SUMMIT23-SVRWIR
May 22-24 - Automate in Detroit - A3
May 29th- June 2nd - ICRA in London - IEEE RAS
June 5-6 - IEEE Conference on AI in Santa Clara - IEEE CS
June 7-8 - Robotics Investment Summit in Boston - Cybernetix Ventures
June 14-17 - VivaTech in Paris - VivaTechnology
June 19-22 - TechConnect World in Washington DC - TechConnect Org
June 20-22 - FITMA in Mexico City - Feria Internationale
June 20-22 - Sensors Converge in Santa Clara - Sensors Converge
June 26-29 - Collision in Toronto - Web Summit
June 27-30 - Automatica in Munich - VDMA
June 27 - coming soon The Future with Robots at the Commonwealth Club SF
Oct 1-5 - IROS in Detroit - IEEE RAS
Deep Reads:
How to Raise Money - Paul Graham
Analysis of AI on edge devices, why server side AI will always win and how far local models can scale - SemiAnalysis by Dylan Patel and Sophia Wisdom
How AI Fails Us and How Economics Can Help - Michael Jordan in Video from CITRIS Research Exchange
Dr Craig Schlenoff of NIST and IEEE Robotics and Automation Society on The Future of Robotics over the Next Few Years - an interview with David Leichner in Authority Magazine