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…
The rise of humanoid robots didn’t happen overnight, but a kind of perfect storm has accelerated the phenomenon over the past year and change. The foundation, of course, is decades of research. Toiling away in research facilities and R&D departments laid the ground work for a new generation of technology. The necessary software and components…
Bay Area-based robotics firm Figure this week announced that its humanoid officially took its first steps — a milestone it hit a few days shy of of the company’s first anniversary. Figure has made a good deal of progress in a short period, due in no small part to founder and CEO Brett Adcock’s initial $100…
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…
The quest to build the perfect humanoid robot is heating up, as Figure — a startup currently operating in stealth — is developing a multi-purpose bipedal ‘bot it plans to pilot in 2024. Speaking under the condition of anonymity, a source close to to the company recently confirmed the startup’s operations, funding, high-profile hires and…
Long gone are the days when a consumer electronics company could simply announce a phone and call it a day. At this morning’s big launch event in Beijing, Xiaomi followed up its foldable news by handing the stage over to CyberOne. The bipedal humanoid robot joined Lei Jun onstage, greeting the CEO and handing him…