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Waymo recently closed a $5.6 billion Series C funding round led by parent company Alphabet and joined by a who’s who of Silicon Valley venture firms. The investment boosts Waymo’s overall valuation to more than $45 billion, according to Bloomberg News. Alphabet had previously announced in July that it was pledging another $5 billion to […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Enjoy today’s videos!
The National Science Foundation Human AugmentatioN via Dexterity Engineering Research Center (HAND ERC) was announced in August 2024. Funded for up to 10 years and $52 million, the HAND ERC is led by Northwestern University, with core members Texas A&M, Florida A&M, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT, and support from Wisconsin-Madison, Syracuse, and an innovation ecosystem consisting of companies, national labs, and civic and advocacy organizations. HAND will develop versatile, easy-to-use dexterous robot end effectors (hands).
[ HAND ]
The Environmental Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich, in partnership with Wilderness International (and some help from DJI and Audi), is using drones to sample DNA from the tops of trees in the Peruvian rainforest. Somehow, the treetops are where 60 to 90 percent of biodiversity is found, and these drones can help researchers determine what the heck is going on up there.
[ ERL ]
Thanks, Steffen!
1X introduces NEO Beta, “the pre-production build of our home humanoid.”
“Our priority is safety,” said Bernt Børnich, CEO at 1X. “Safety is the cornerstone that allows us to confidently introduce NEO Beta into homes, where it will gather essential feedback and demonstrate its capabilities in real-world settings. This year, we are deploying a limited number of NEO units in selected homes for research and development purposes. Doing so means we are taking another step toward achieving our mission.”
[ 1X ]
We love MangDang’s fun and affordable approach to robotics with Mini Pupper. The next generation of the little legged robot has just launched on Kickstarter, featuring new and updated robots that make it easy to explore embodied AI.
The Kickstarter is already fully funded after just a day or two, but there are still plenty of robots up for grabs.
[ Kickstarter ]
Quadrupeds in space can use their legs to reorient themselves. Or, if you throw one off a roof, it can learn to land on its feet.
To be presented at CoRL 2024.
[ ARL ]
HEBI Robotics, which apparently was once headquartered inside a Pittsburgh public bus, has imbued a table with actuators and a mind of its own.
[ HEBI Robotics ]
Carcinization is a concept in evolutionary biology where a crustacean that isn’t a crab eventually becomes a crab. So why not do the same thing with robots? Crab robots solve all problems!
[ KAIST ]
Waymo is smart, but also humans are really, really dumb sometimes.
[ Waymo ]
The Robotics Department of the University of Michigan created an interactive community art project. The group that led the creation believed that while roboticists typically take on critical and impactful problems in transportation, medicine, mobility, logistics, and manufacturing, there are many opportunities to find play and amusement. The final piece is a grid of art boxes, produced by different members of our robotics community, which offer an eight-inch-square view into their own work with robotics.
I appreciate that UBTECH’s humanoid is doing an actual job, but why would you use a humanoid for this?
[ UBTECH ]
I’m sure most actuators go through some form of life-cycle testing. But if you really want to test an electric motor, put it into a BattleBot and see what happens.
Yes, but have you tried fighting a BattleBot?
[ AgileX ]
In this video, we present collaboration aerial grasping and transportation using multiple quadrotors with cable-suspended payloads. Grasping using a suspended gripper requires accurate tracking of the electromagnet to ensure a successful grasp while switching between different slack and taut modes. In this work, we grasp the payload using a hybrid control approach that switches between a quadrotor position control and a payload position control based on cable slackness. Finally, we use two quadrotors with suspended electromagnet systems to collaboratively grasp and pick up a larger payload for transportation.
[ Hybrid Robotics ]
I had not realized that the floretizing of broccoli was so violent.
[ Oxipital ]
While the RoboCup was held over a month ago, we still wanted to make a small summary of our results, the most memorable moments, and of course an homage to everyone who is involved with the B-Human team: the team members, the sponsors, and the fans at home. Thank you so much for making B-Human the team it is!
[ B-Human ]
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