iRobot yesterday reported strong financial results for second-quarter 2013, which ended June 29. According to CEO Colin Angle, “[iRobot] had an excellent quarter following our outstanding Q1. Our Home Robot business delivered strong results both domestically and overseas and the outlook continues to be excellent. We announced our second remote presence market initiative, Enterprise Tele-presence, in
Robotics and autonomous systems are among three key technologies earmarked by the United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer to receive an £85 million investment for capital equipment. The investment comes as part of the government’s £600 million “eight great technologies” initiative, which was outlined earlier this year. Speaking earlier this week at the Global Intelligent
We’re living in an era where low-cost computers, open-source software and crowdfunding have helped democratize the creation and production of robots. Now a new company that comes out of that ethos — its product runs off Arduino boards, it promotes open-source ideology and its origins were on Kickstarter — is trying to do the same for
In yet another sign of how quickly 3-D printing is growing, Stratasys announced yesterday that it will acquire MakerBot in a stock-for-stock transaction initially valued at $403 million — not including performance-based incentives that could increase the total to more than $600 million (based on Wednesday’s stock price). It was just last week that we
At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference yesterday, a robotics and artificial intelligence start-up made a surprise appearance during the opening keynote. The San Francisco-based company, Anki, is backed by $50 million in venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures and Two Sigma. Like Bossa Nova Robotics, Seegrid and a host of hot robotics companies, it was
Texas Instruments announced yesterday that it has become the first semiconductor company to install the AutoStore inventory management system. The company installed AutoStore in its Singapore product distribution center, which began ramping up this week and will be in full production by September. Texas Instruments says the installation represents the first such system in Asia. It was
Several news organizations, including TechCrunch and VentureBeat, reported today that Double Robotics is now shipping its unique “wheels for your iPad” telepresence robot. Double, as the system is called, has managed to stand out in the somewhat crowded telepresence field because of its attractive design and relatively inexpensive price tag ($1,999 if you order today)
The biggest name in robot-assisted surgery is Intuitive Surgical, whose da Vinci Surgical System has been installed in more than 2,000 hospitals since its introduction in 1999. However, with sales of medical robots topping a billion dollars annually (Intuitive itself reported revenue of $611 million in its most recent quarter) and expected to grow, they are
In our recent conversation with Sam Park, vice president and chief technology officer at South Korea’s Yujin Robot, Park emphasized that his company is looking for ways to remove complexity from its robots by replacing it with technology that is already available in most homes. The most obvious example of this idea is using a
Hello and welcome to The Business of Robotics! If you have even a passing interest in robotics, you know the field is exploding, having reached a technological tipping point that is bringing self-driving cars and robot co-workers out of the realm of science fiction and into reality. Just last week, a new $100 million dollar
