iRobot names former Timex head Gary Cohen as CEO

iRobot has announced the successor to longtime CEO, Colin Angle. Gary Cohen, who previous held chief executive role at Timex and Qualitor Automotive, will be heading up the company, marking a major shift from his predecessor, Angle, a cofounder of the company who held the role from 1997 until January of this year. Cohen joins iRobot at […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Lucid Bots secures $9M for drones to clean more than your windows

Cleaning the outside of buildings is a dirty job, and it’s also dangerous. Lucid Bots came on the scene in 2018 with its Sherpa line of drones to clean windows in tall places, and now it’s back to take on more labor-intensive tasks. The Charlotte, N.C.-based company, which was part of Y Combinator’s 2019 cohort, […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Alphabet-owned Intrinsic incorporates Nvidia tech into robotics platform

The first bit of news out of the Automate conference this year arrives by way of Alphabet X spinout Intrinsic. The firm announced at the Chicago event on Monday that it is incorporating a number of Nvidia offerings into its Flowstate robotic app platform. That includes Isaac Manipulator, a collection of foundational models designed to create […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Microsoft taps Sanctuary AI for general-purpose robot research

Microsoft, it seems, is hedging its bets when it comes to general-purpose robotics AI. At the end of February, the Windows maker spearheaded a massive $675 million Series B in Bay Area-based Figure. Today, the tech giant announced a collaboration with Figure competitor Sanctuary AI, best known for its humanoid robot, Phoenix. The Sanctuary partnership […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

CMU is developing low-flying drones to map wildfires

A harsh truth: as bad as North American wildfires have grown over the past several years, things are only going to get worse. Climate change continues to accelerate the issue, putting people, property, nature and animals at risk. Drones have been a fixture in the fight for over a decade now, and the Fire Apparatus […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Humanoid robots are learning to fall well

The savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics produced two major robotics news cycles last week. The larger of the two was, naturally, the electric Atlas announcement. As I write this, the sub-40 second video is steadily approaching five million views. A day prior, the company tugged at the community’s heart strings when it announced that the […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Humanoid robots are learning to fall well

The savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics produced two major robotics news cycles last week. The larger of the two was, naturally, the electric Atlas announcement. As I write this, the sub-40 second video is steadily approaching five million views. A day prior, the company tugged at the community’s heart strings when it announced that the […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

London’s first defense tech hackathon brings Ukraine war closer to the city’s startups

Last week, the UK announced its largest ever military support package for Ukraine. The bill takes the U.K.’s total support for this financial year to £3 billion — not quite the $50 billion the US pledged recently, but still substantial. But while most of those funds will be spent on very traditional military hardware, a […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Sanctuary’s new humanoid robot learns faster and costs less

Sanctuary AI often isn’t mentioned in the same breath as humanoid robotics firms like Boston Dynamics, Agility, Figure and 1X, but the Canadian company has been operating in the space for some time. In fact, a new robot introduced on Thursday is actually the seventh-generation of its Phoenix line. While a recent iteration introduced legs […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.