Polymath Robotics hosts next SVR meetup, Good news for Monarch Tractors and NVIDIA, not so for Tesla and Embark
Coming up next, some posts on the robots of ICRA 2023.
There’s a real mix of topics in the quick reads this week, but the underlying thesis is scouting around the edges of the robotics industry in order to better gauge the headwinds or tailwinds, and future investable startups. Electrification is a big part of future trends, and therefore so is battery technology, recycling and reshoring. Coming up next, some posts on the robots of ICRA 2023.
Big thank you to everyone who has become a paid subscriber - it makes you an angel investor in the work I do at Silicon Valley Robotics and as a startup advisor, and accelerator. And maybe we can do more to share your experience and expertize with the robotics startup community. Maybe Mentor Office Hours, maybe startup profiles. We’ll keep exploring.
Quick Reads:
NASA-developed spherical robots to the rescue - Rebecca Carroll NASA in AeroTech News also on NASA TV
Modern AI is domestification - Ted Xiao in The Gradient
What AI bosses need to hear - Azeem Azhar in Exponential View
The tiny corp raised $5.1M - George Hotz in the singularity is nearer
Gitai wants to build a robotics labor force for the moon and Mars - Aria Alamalhodaei in TechCrunch
Automate 2023 shows renewed focus on manufacturing, partnerships and data as a differentiator - Eugene Demaitre in Robotics 24/7
Amazon gives up a key part of its climate pledge and deletes the blog post that announced the Shipment Zero initiative - Alistair Barr in Business Insider
MK-V Tractor: The Tesla of agriculture? Future Farming
One of the biggest battery recycling plants in the US is up and running - Canary Media
Apple announces multibillion-dollar deal with Broadcom to make components in the USA - Hartley Charlton in MacRumors
Watches: charting the history of clockmakers and robotics - Richard Holt in Top Gear
ABB predicts top US robotics trends - ABB Robotics in Robotics 24/7
Apptronik readies its humanoid robot for a summer unveil - Brian Heater in TechCrunch
No programmers? No problem: READY Robotics simplifies robot coding, rollouts - Scott Martin in NVIDIA
Silicon Valley is reviving the dream of general purpose humanoid robots - Edd Gent in Singularity Hub
Inside look at a modern American robotics warehouse in Huntsville - Lee Roop in Al.com
Deep Robotics launches Lite3 quadruped robot with advanced front flipping mobility - The Robot Report
Drone research center takes autonomous building repairs to the skies - Adam Williams in New Atlas
Electric truck maker Nikola at risk of being delisted from Nasdaq - Kirsten Korosec in TechCrunch
Applied Intuition to acquire self-driving truck software company Embark for $71M - Duncan Riley in Silicon Angle also in Heavy Duty Trucking
Vicarious, preparing to take on Intuitive in robotic surgery, names new COO, John Mazzola - Susan Kelly in MedTech Dive
Would you let a robot apply your eyelash extensions? - Kerry Potter in Get the Gloss
Agility Robotics names Melonee Wise as CTO - Steve Crowe in The Robot Report
AI startup Figure raises $70 million to build humanoid robots - Krystal Hu in Reuters
Who’s testing the latest autonomous vehicle tech? The Port Authority. Here’s how - Colleen Wilson in NorthJersey.com
Tesla leak reportedly shows thousands of Full Self-Driving safety complaints - Emma Roth in The Verge
IAM Robotics emerges from stealth with new picking system designed for warehouses, factories - Cesareo Contreras in Robotics 24/7
Nala Robotics debuts Bowl Bot, LG shows off improved CLOi - Ottomate News
Opentrons aims to democratize lab access with its Flex robot - Brian Heater in TechCrunch
Roberta Nelson Shea of Universal Robots receives Engelberger Award for her contributions to robot safety - Robotics 24/7
The Gospel of ARK Invest - Kyle Harrison in Investing 101
Spotlight on Polymath Robotic
The next Silicon Valley Robotics Bots&Beer will be hosted at Polymath Robotics in San Francisco. Also it’s going to be on TUESDAY June 6th, not the usual Wednesday due to many event clashes. Meanwhile, let’s learn more about our hosts…
“The longer you've been in robotics, the more you get frustrated by how hard it is to make your robot even SORT OF work. After hitting the same roadblocks again and again, we decided to build a simplified navigation system for industrial autonomy.”
Polymath works on most large outdoor vehicles that work in a contained environment. Some examples are; tractors, dump trucks, combines, yard trucks or excavators. Basically, Polymath lets you build an autonomous vehicle without touching ROS. And if you’re building custom behaviors you can do so in ROS containers that work with Polymath.
Robotics Events:
May 29th- June 2nd - ICRA in London - IEEE RAS
June 5-6 - IEEE Conference on AI in Santa Clara - IEEE CS
June 6 - Bots & Beer at Polymath Robotics - Silicon Valley Robotics
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 - The Future with Robots - Silicon Valley Robotics and IEEE RAS at the Commonwealth Club SF
Oct 1-5 - IROS in Detroit - IEEE RAS
Deep Reads:
LIMA: Less is more for alignment - Chunting Zhou, Pengfei Liu, Puxin Xu, Srini Iyer, Jiao Sun, Yuning Mao, Xuezhe Ma, Avia Efrat, Ping Yu, Lili Yu, Susan Zhang, Gargi Ghosh, Mike Lewis, Luke Zettlemoyer, Omer Levy via ARXIV and Cornell University
A year of transition for 3PLs - Logistics companies grow in 2022 amid inventory buildup - Transport Topics
RIOS and factories of the future - Manufacturing Happy Hour