As if it weren’t enough to have AI tanning humanity’s hide (figuratively for now) at every board game in existence, Google AI has got one working to destroy us all at ping pong as well. For now they emphasize it’s “cooperative” but at the rate these things improve, it will be taking on pros in […]
When Quddus Pativada was 14, he wished that he had an app that could summarize his textbooks for him. Just five years later, Pativada has been there and done that — earlier this year, he launched the AI-based app Kado, which turns photos, documents or PDFs into flash cards. Now, as the 19-year-old founder takes […]
The multi-decade rise in healthcare costs isn’t expected to reverse course any time soon. In search of a fix, Adun Akanni and TJ Ademiluyi co-founded Alaffia Health in 2020, one of the startups participating in the ZebethMedia Disrupt Battlefield 200. The healthtech company uses machine learning to try to identify fraud, waste and abuse in […]
Some robotics challenges have immediately clear applications. Others are more focused on helping systems solve broader challenges. Teaching small robots to play soccer against one another fits firmly into the latter category. The authors of a new paper detailing the use of reinforcement learning to teach MIT’s Mini Cheetah robot to play goalie note, Soccer […]
Stability AI, the company funding the development of open source music- and image-generating systems like Dance Diffusion and Stable Diffusion, today announced that it raised $101 million in a funding round led by Coatue and Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from O’Shaughnessy Ventures LLC. The tranche values the company at $1 billion post-money, according to […]
It’s been more than 20 years since the da Vinci Surgical System received FDA clearance. Pretty incredible when you think about it. Robotic surgery and automation in general have come a long way since then, and a number of companies have entered the lucrative category, focused on all manner of different procedures. Surprisingly, robotic dental […]
Ambi Robotics, a startup developing supply chain automation hardware, today announced that it raised $32 million in additional funding led by Tiger Global and Bow Capital, with participation from Ahren and logistics firm Pitney Bowes. Pitney Bowes is a strategic investor in Ambi, having recently inked a $23 million deal with the company to deploy […]
Manipulation and sensing have long been considered two key pillars for unlocking robotics’ potential. There’s a fair bit of overlap between the two, of course. As grippers have become a fundamental element of industrial robotics, these systems require the proper mechanisms for interacting with the world around them. Vision has long been a key to […]
Volkswagen is accelerating the pace to automate its electric vehicles for Chinese customers. CARIAD, a wholly-owned automotive software company of the German auto behemoth, intends to set up a joint venture with Horizon Robotics, one of China’s most serious auto chip developers, the company said on Thursday. The German automaker plans to deploy around €2.4 […]
I don’t love devoting the first several paragraphs of this newsletter to Amazon every week, but no one is making waves — both good and bad — in the robotics space quite like the little mom-and-pop bookseller from Seattle, Washington. This is one of the bad weeks. It’s a story about what happens when your […]
