More interesting things in robotics this week

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Here's the rest of the September robotics funding rounds:

Iron Ox - Series C - $53m

San Carlos based Iron Ox operates autonomous robotic greenhouses that grow every plant at its best from seed to harvest.

Advanced Robotics - PreSeed - $50k

San Gabriel based Advanced Robotics automate medical services in hospitals, pharmacies and healthcare facilities.

OpenTrons - Series C - $200m

Brooklyn based OpenTrons is a developer of a pipetting robot technology designed to automate experiments.

Blue White Robotics - Series B - $37m

Tel Aviv based Blue White Robotics offers custom-made, on-time, and affordable testing and experiment solutions based on military experiment methodologies.

PuduTech - Series C - $78m

Shenzhen based PuduTech uses artificial intelligence to build autonomous delivery robots for the home care, food service, and catering industries.

Trifo - Series C - CNY 100m

Santa Clara based Trifo is an AI home robot company that helps people live better by doing work around the home.

Geopipe - Seed - $2.4m

New York based Geopipe builds immersive digital twins of the real world for gaming, simulation, architecture, and beyond using machine learning.

Astera Labs - Series C - $50m

Santa Clara based Astera Labs is a semiconductor company that provides connectivity solutions for intelligent systems.

Burro - Series A - $10.9m

Philadelphia HQ'd and California based Burro is a developer of an autonomous farming platform for use on farms and in other tough outdoor environments.

Ceres Imaging - Series C - $23m

Oakland based Ceres Imaging is a California-based aerial spectral imagery and analytics company that serves farmers and agribusinesses.

Cowarobot - Series C - $250m

Shanghai based Cowarobot is to bring people the future travel experience by using robotics, self-driving technology and other intelligent solutions.

DroneSeed - Series A - $43m

Seattle based DroneSeed is paid per acre to plant tree seed vessels after a wildfire -- using heavy-lift Drone Swarms

GrayMatter Robotics - Seed - $4.1m

Los Angeles based GrayMatter Robotics creates solutions to assist humans in tedious and ergonomically challenging tasks.

DIWÖ - Seed - n/a

Sweden based Diwö is accelerating the transition into safe AI using autonomous UAVs and Robotics

Activ Surgical - Series B - $45m

Boston based Activ Surgical is a digital surgery company focused on improving surgical efficiency, accuracy, patient outcomes, and accessibility.

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Honda Motor Company announced plans to innovate in new business areas like electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL), bipedal robots and space technology. Honda R&D Co., Honda Motor Company’s (HMC) innovations arm, will be leading the effort on “outside-the-box research on technologies that will bring about new value for people by expanding the potential […]

Yesterday, Amazon announced a mobile home robot called Astro, which we've been expecting for the past several years. Astro's got wheels. It's got cameras. It's got a screen. It has two cup holders for some reason. It costs $1,000. I am very, very confused.

"What are we going to do with a robot," a woman asks in this PR video about Astro. Watch as the rest of the video fails to answer that very question, which is a question you'd ideally want to have completely locked down before you build a robot and shoot a PR video:

Dec 1 - Dec 2 | San Diego & online

Robotics for Good is a series of expert talks that explore the applications of intelligent autonomous systems. Intelligent autonomous systems are developed by integrating AI with robotics. This powerful combination enhances the capabilities of robots by enabling them to analyze, learn and self-improve without having to be programmed in a classical way.

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We are well into the third wave of major investment in artificial intelligence. So it's a fine time to take a historical perspective on the current success of AI. In the 1960s, the early AI researchers often breathlessly predicted that human-level intelligent machines were only 10 years away. That form of AI was based on logical reasoning with symbols, and was carried out with what today seem like ludicrously slow digital computers. Those same researchers considered and rejected neural networks.....

READ NEXT: How Deep Learning Works

Or see the full report for more articles on the future of AI.

How will automation impact us, humans? Typical answers cite broad efficiency gains and lean on the hopes of creating new opportunities and new jobs. But in a world of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), this response seems naïve.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!):

This week we have a special DARPA SubT edition of Video Friday, both because the SubT Final is happening this week and is amazing, and also because (if I'm being honest) the SubT Final is happening this week and is amazing and I've spent all week covering it mostly in a cave with zero access to Internet. Win-win, right? So today, videos to watch are DARPA's recaps of the preliminary competition days, plus (depending on when you're tuning in) a livestream of the prize round highlights, the awards ceremony, and the SubT Summit with roundtable discussions featuring both the Virtual and Systems track teams.