Google Puts Boston Dynamics Up for Sale in Robotics Retreat
Brad Stone and Jack Clark for Bloomberg Business: The video, published to YouTube on Feb. 23, was awe-inspiring and scary. A two-legged humanoid robot trudges through the snow, somehow maintaining its balance. Another robot with two arms and pads for hands crouches down and lifts a brown box and delicately places it on a shelf -- then somehow stays upright while a human tries to push it over with a hockey stick. A third robot topples over and clambers back to its feet with ease.
Tens of millions of people viewed the video over the next few weeks. Google and the division responsible for the video, Boston Dynamics, were seemingly pushing the frontier in robot technology.
But behind the scenes a more pedestrian drama was playing out. Executives at Google parent Alphabet Inc., absorbed with making sure all the various companies under its corporate umbrella have plans to generate real revenue, concluded that Boston Dynamics isn’t likely to produce a marketable product in the next few years and have put the unit up for sale, according to two people familiar with the company’s plans.
Possible acquirers include the Toyota Research Institute, a division of Toyota Motor Corp., and Amazon.com Inc., which makes robots for its fulfillment centers, according to one person. Google and Toyota declined to comment, and Amazon didn’t respond to requests for comment. Full Article:
Robomatter, Inc. and Engineering For Kids Announce Partnership to Bring STEM Education to Students across North America
The new partnership between Robomatter and Engineering For Kids will deliver Robomatters robotics and computer science STEM education content to students in the United States, Canada, and Mexico
Panasonic Develops Assist Robots
Back support offering Assist Suit: AWN-03 was developed to provide lower back support. When lifting and holding heavy objects, it reduces stress on the user's lower back by 15kg.
AUTOMATICA 2016: Mobile platforms for industry and the service sector
Professional Service Robotics
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Pedersen was selected from a field of highly qualified candidates by a committee of his peers in the Pittsburgh science and technology community.
Effective Agile Development Announces the Use of the Interbotics HR-OS1 Humanoid Research Robot from Trossen Robotics in Effective Scrum Developer Training
The mission is to make the process of developing software more productive using Agile product development using the Scrum framework. The 21st Century Robot Project provides an excellent platform to make that mission more fun and interesting.
I Sing the Body Electric
Prosthetic technology is advancing rapidly, but not without sticking points.
Hydroid Introduces the New Generation REMUS 100 AUV
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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...
WPI Software in Play at FIRST Robotics Competitions
FRC teams across the world are using tools WPI helped develop, including 40 teams this weekend in Worcester
Maplesoft and Instructure team up to allow easy integration of Canvas and Maple T.A.
Collaboration unites course management with STEM testing tools
Rethink Robotics Announces Major Distribution Partnerships in Germany
Sawyer is a smart, collaborative robot that can be trained by demonstration and change tasks quickly to fit the individual needs of the factory.
What The Heck Is An Unmanned Ground Engineering Vehicle?
The boom can be fitted with up to 80 different tools, including hydraulic hammers, cutting discs, clamps, and buckets.
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Mobile Robots - Featured Product
Boston Dynamics Webinar - Why Humanoids Are the Future of Manufacturing
Join us November 18th for this Webinar as we reflect on what we've learned by observing factory floors, and why we've grown convinced that chasing generalization in manipulation—both in hardware and behavior—isn't just interesting, but necessary. We'll discuss AI research threads we're exploring at Boston Dynamics to push this mission forward, and highlight opportunities our field should collectively invest more in to turn the humanoid vision, and the reinvention of manufacturing, into a practical, economically viable product.
Robotics and Automation - Featured Company
MVTec LLC
MVTec is a leading international manufacturer of software for machine vision used in all demanding areas of imaging like the semi-conductor industry, inspection, optical quality control, metrology, medicine or surveillance. In particular, software by MVTec enables new automation solutions in settings of the Industrial Internet of Things. MVTec is the developer and vendor of the general purpose machine vision software products HALCON and MERLIC.
