Dmitry Grishin Doubles Down on Robotics With New $100 Million Fund

Erico Guizzo for IEEE Spectrum:  Nearly four years ago, Dmitry Grishin launched a US $25 million fund to invest exclusively in consumer robots. Grishin, the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Mail.ru, the Russian Internet giant, believed that robotics was going to be one of the next big technology revolutions, and he was willing to put his money where his mouth was. Now the Russian investor is ready to double down on his vision. Or actuallydouble double down. Grishin Robotics has recently announced a second fund four times as large as the original one. The new $100 million fund will seek Series A and B deals and expand its focus to include startups in markets like connected devices, collaborative and material-handling robots, AI and data analytics, and industrial Internet of Things.   Cont'd...

Upcoming Tradeshow, Conference & Exhibition Summary - May, June, July 2016

Here is a summary of what Tradeshows, Conferences & Exhibitions to look forward to in the coming months.

Hardware vs Soft Motion Control: Costs and Performance Compared

Businesses succeed when they produce quality products at lower cost and faster time to market than their competitors.

9 open source robotics projects

Jason Baker for OpenSource:  Open source isn't just changing the way we interact with the world, it's changing the way the world interacts back with us. Case in point: open source robotics. Robots are playing an increasing role in our world, and while we perhaps haven't reached the utopian future with robotic housekeepers imagined for us in the Jetsons, robotics are making advances in fields that fifty years ago would have been completely unimaginable. While undoubtedly manufacturing has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the robot renaissance, we are seeing robots enter the mainstream as well. Many of us have robots that clean our floors, clear our gutters, mow our grass, and more. And now, with the advances of self driving cars, drones, and other transport technologies, the line between what is a robot and what is a vehicle is steadily blurring. But let's be honest: a lot of us have an interest in robotics simply because it's fun! And the good news is you don't need to be an electrical engineer to enjoy robotics as a hobby. Fortunately, there are a number of open source projects out there that can help even the most novice beginner get started.  Full Article:

Industrial Machine Automation: Soft motion control has better performance and value than hardware

Businesses succeed when they produce quality products at lower cost and faster time-to-market than their competitors

Why Everyone Must Get Ready For 4th Industrial Revolution

Bernard Marr for Forbes:  First came steam and water power; then electricity and assembly lines; then computerization… So what comes next? Some call it the fourth industrial revolution, or industry 4.0, but whatever you call it, it represents the combination of cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things, and the Internet of Systems. In short, it is the idea of smart factories in which machines are augmented with web connectivity and connected to a system that can visualize the entire production chain and make decisions on its own. And it’s well on its way and will change most of our jobs. Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, has published a book entitled The Fourth Industrial Revolution in which he describes how this fourth revolution is fundamentally different from the previous three, which were characterized mainly by advances in technology. In this fourth revolution, we are facing a range of new technologies that combine the physical, digital and biological worlds. These new technologies will impact all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenge our ideas about what it means to be human.   Cont'd...

Collaborative Robots Are Broadening Their Marketplaces

In a human-machine study conducted by an MIT professor, it was shown that teams made of humans and robots collaborating efficiently can be more productive than teams made of either humans or robots alone.

National Robotics Week delights kids

Greg Nichols for ZDNet:  The seventh annual National Robotics Week, which kicks off this week, will see more than 250 events take place across all 50 states. It's a pretty cool time to celebrate robots. A new generation of small, relatively inexpensive, and highly collaborative industrial robots brought new levels of automation to light industry last year. Home robots, in the form of vacuums and lawn mowers, continue to do well in sales, and drones--technically flying robots--are everywhere. I'm literally watching one fly over a park near my house as I write. New kinds of bots are also making early strides. Companies like Savioke are bringing robots to hotels and others likeRevolve Robotics and Double are connecting people via affordable embodied telepresence--especially people whose disabilities prevent them from traveling to school or work.   Cont'd...

Collaborative Robots Will Transform Logistics Says DHL Group

Patrick Burnson for Logistics Management:  “Robots work in many industries but haven’t made an impact on logistics yet because of the complexity of the work – handling a wide array of different things in an infinite number of combinations, close to people and in confined spaces,” says Matthias Heutger, Senior Vice President Strategy for the Group. “Current research shows that 80 percent of logistics facilities today are still manual. Recently, however, technology is just starting to catch up to meet demands for flexible and low-cost robots that could collaboratively work in logistics.” The report highlights that the development of the next generation of robots that can see, move, react to their environment and work at precision tasks alongside people, is on a fast track powered by the explosion in labor-intensive e-commerce and diminishing and ageing workforces.   Cont'd...

Man Vs Machine

The result of this rung-in change is intended to be that man and machine respectively do what they can do best. The weaknesses of one are compensated for by the strengths of the other.

The Changing Role of Robotics in Materials Handling: Industrial Journalist Thomas R. Cutler Interviews Steven Hogg of Bastian Robotics

Short-term, robotic integration will continue to grow as companies continue to establish automation plans, and long-term, robotic automation will be a standard in every facility. This will be a requirement for companies to compete in the global marketplace.

Amazon Hosted A Secretive Robotics Conference In Florida

Michael Grothaus for FastCompany:  Amazon hosted a secret robotics conference in Palm Springs, Florida last weekend, reports Bloomberg. The conference, dubbed "MARS," which stands for "Machine-Learning (Home) Automation, Robotics and Space Exploration," was an invite-only event held at the Parker Palm Springs that brought together experts in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and home automation. Amazon has not publicly commented on the conference, but reports on social media from attendees leaked its existence. Bloomberg notes that the conference hosted some big names, including film director Ron Howard and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The event was also attended by a number of academics from MIT, the University of California at Berkeley, and ETH Zurich, sources told Bloomberg. Also in attendance were some CEOs and representatives from companies including Rethink Robotics, Toyota Motor Corp., and iRobot.   Cont'd...

2016: Six Trends Affecting Safety In The Workplace

Safety is a complex topic, but these six factors are helping to not only increase workplace safety this year but also efficiency, quality and employee well-being.

February Fundings And Acquisitions

It's too early to tell whether the record-breaking pace of 2015 fundings for robotic startups and the number of acquisitions will carry over into 2016, nevertheless here are the transactions that happened in February

18 months since the toolkit's release, soft robotics is flying

Gordon Hunt for SiliconRepublic:  Pioneered in Ireland by the likes of Dr Dónal Holland, with a plethora of departments in Harvard University in the US involved, the Soft Robotics Toolkit has gone on to foster significant interest in an area exploding into the mainstream. More than 76,000 people have engaged with the service since it was created, represented across 150 different countries, with the toolkit identified as having made one of the most significant contributions to the development of the nascent industry to date. While robotics engineering used to focus much more attention on creating the rigid, hard-bodied prototypes like Bender from Futurama, for example, lately there has been a push towards soft, malleable structures that take their inspiration from nature.   Cont'd...

Records 1126 to 1140 of 1954

First | Previous | Next | Last

Industrial Robotics - Featured Product

Zimmer Group - THE PREMIUM GRIPPER NOW WITH IO-LINK

Zimmer Group - THE PREMIUM GRIPPER NOW WITH IO-LINK

IO-Link is the first standardized IO technology worldwide for communication from the control system to the lowest level of automation.