In Episode 171 of The Robotic Report Podcast, co-hosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman study the most recent video from XPENG, exhibiting the Iron humanoid robotic working on the ground of XPENG automation manufacturing plant.
Featured interview with Swiss-Mile
Within the featured interview this week, Mike Oitzman and Eugene Demaitre interview Marko Bjelonic, CEO and co-founder of Swiss-Mile, discussing the revolutionary quadruped robotic that mixes wheels and legs for enhanced mobility. They discover the evolution of the robotic from tutorial analysis to a industrial product, the engineering challenges confronted, and the distinctive functionalities that set it aside. The dialogue additionally covers potential functions in safety and logistics, the significance of autonomy in robotics, and the longer term path of Swiss-Mile as a technology-focused firm.
Hyperlink: https://www.swiss-mile.com/
Present timeline
- 1:13 – Boston Dynamics humanoid video dialogue
- 9:27 – Information
- 25:37 – Interview with Marko Bjelonic, CEO and co-founder of Swiss-Mile
Information of the week
2025 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Awards open for nominations
Now you can submit nominations for the 2025 RBR50 innovation awards. They may acknowledge expertise and enterprise improvements in calendar yr 2024, and the awards are open to any firm worldwide that produces robotics or automation.
The classes embody:
- Applied sciences, merchandise, and providers: This class contains main or utilized analysis specializing in robotics and supporting applied sciences corresponding to movement management, imaginative and prescient, or machine studying. It additionally contains new merchandise and enterprise, engineering, or expertise providers.
- Enterprise and administration: This class covers initiatives positioning an organization as a market chief or a corporation as an necessary thought chief within the robotics ecosystem. Vital mergers and acquisitions are related, as are provider, accomplice, and integrator relationships.
- Purposes and markets: The RBR50 may even acknowledge improvements that enhance productiveness, high quality, and cost-effectiveness, in addition to those who automate new duties.
As well as, the 2025 RBR50 awards will have fun the next:
- Startup of the Yr
- Software of the Yr
- Robotic of the Yr
- Robots for Good Award
The deadline for submissions is Friday, Dec. 20, 2024.
iRobot, maker of the favored Roomba robotic vacuum, is shedding one other 105 staff as a part of its restructuring plans. The variety of staff being let go represents 16% of iRobot’s international workforce as of September 28, 2024. For the reason that begin of 2024, iRobot has lowered its international workforce by almost 50%. There are a number of causes iRobot, which has offered greater than 50 million robots worldwide, is struggling. One of many principal causes is the failed acquisition from Amazon, which was known as off earlier in 2024. Amazon needed to accumulate iRobot for $1.7 billion, however the deal was in the end known as off as a result of regulators mentioned the deal would limit competitors. Amazon paid iRobot $94 million to terminate the deal. Competitors is one other main motive for iRobot’s present state of affairs. Within the final decade-plus, a number of robust opponents have popped up all over the world with robotic vacuums which are typically cheaper than the Roomba and supply comparable efficiency.
Basis fashions promise to offer robots the power to generalize actions from fewer examples than conventional synthetic intelligence approaches. Bodily Intelligence right this moment introduced that it has raised $400 million to proceed its improvement of AI for a variety of robots. Bodily Intelligence acknowledged that basis fashions that may management any robotic to carry out any job “are nonetheless of their infancy.” It mentioned it’s engaged on the info and partnerships to pretrain these fashions and allow new ranges of dexterity and bodily functionality. Bodily Intelligence raised $70 million in seed financing earlier this yr, and the corporate informed The Robotic Report that its valuation has risen to $2.4 billion. Jeff Bezos, govt chairman of Amazon, led the corporate’s newest funding spherical, together with Thrive Capital and Lux Capital.
This story is a few distinctive robotic that operates underground in a “pipe” to maneuver ready meals from a fast service restaurant to finish customers, say, in a industrial constructing.The pipe is like 2-3 ft in diameter, there’s basically a practice observe within the pipe, and the automated shuttles can carry a tote from the restaurant out to varied pickup areas. All mounted infrastructure, nevertheless it’s fully underground and out of the climate. The imaginative and prescient is that this infrastructure can be put in place in an city setting, and help the logistics of supply between the QSR location and varied company campuses. The firm goals to drastically cut back supply occasions and streamline restaurant operations. Robust monetary backing has fueled speedy progress. Pipedream beforehand raised $13 million in enterprise capital.
Podcast sponsored by RGO Robotics
The present this week is sponsored by RGO Robotics
Is your autonomous cellular robotic struggling in dynamic environments? Is what you are promoting caught as a result of it takes months to fee a brand new website?
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Main AMR firms are enhancing their fleets with RGo’s AI-powered notion, enabling their groups to speed up use of superior AI capabilities like basis fashions and digital twins.
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