Announced amid a deluge of news at this week’s Delivering the Future event in Seattle was word that Amazon will begin testing Agility’s Digit in a move that could bring the bipedal robot to its nationwide fulfillment centers. It’s baby steps as these things go, and such early-stage deals don’t necessary mean something bigger down…
In May of this year, TechCrunch ran a piece titled “Figure’s humanoid robot takes its first steps.” The story was a firsthand account of my visit to the startup’s South Bay offices. The headline was a reference to both the company’s first year of existence and its stated plan to hit a key milestone by…
Jeff Cardenas pulls out his MacBook. Apptronik’s co-founder and CEO has a slideshow he wants to show, running down the Austin startup’s seven-year history. It does, indeed, take a bit of contextualizing. Like many fellow robotics firms, the company was fueled by government contracts in its earliest days. First up was Valkyrie 2, the second…
Toward the rear of the office, an engineer is working on a metal hand. It looks human enough — roughly the same size with four fingers and a thumb. The Figure team is methodically testing every piece of their robot skeleton before piecing them all together to watch the prototype take its first steps —…
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the company’s robot, named Optimus, will be “worth more than the car business, worth more than FSD.” FSD, or “full self-driving,” is Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system that relies on cameras and computer vision technology to perform some autonomous driving tasks. An FSD subscription costs Tesla owners about $12,000, or…
Gideon Kimbrell Contributor Share on Twitter Gideon Kimbrell is the co-founder and CEO of InList. More posts by this contributor If we can’t design autonomous robots, maybe they can design themselves Elon Musk’s recent announcement of an upcoming Tesla Bot — complete with a human form, “human-level hands” and a characteristically optimistic delivery date —…
Boston Dynamics has been teaching its old bots new tricks — Atlas, its humanoid robot that walks on two legs, can now do a surprisingly elegant gymnastics routine, tumbling into a handstand, followed by cartwheels and including a jump twist. This level of athleticism (can a robot express “athleticism”?) is incredibly impressive, given that this…
Programming robots to walk on flat, even ground is difficult enough, but Florida’s Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) is tackling the grander challenge of making sure bipedal robots can successfully navigate rough terrain. The research organization has been demonstrating its work in this area since 2016, but its latest video (via Engadget) shows…
Sad news for anyone into giant robots: Google parent Alphabet is closing down Schaft, its secretive unit that develops bipedal robots aimed at helping out in disaster efforts and generally looking badass. The news was first reported by Nikkei, but Alphabet confirmed to TechCrunch that the business will be shuttered. It said it is helping staff find…
Robots are coming. Are they overlords or friendly companions designed to help us perform the mundane tasks of our respective days? Perhaps it’s both. Whatever the purpose, they’re no longer part of some vague future we can’t quite fathom. They’re here now, and we got to meet a few of them at TC Sessions: Robotics…