robotics

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Pony.ai launches a self-driving ride-hailing fleet for public use in China

 Autonomous driving technology startup Pony.ai has become the first company to operate an autonomous ride-hailing service on public roads for public users in China. The company, just over a year-old, recently raised $112 million in a Series A round to help it accelerate its efforts, and its fleet is running a nearly two-mile route in Nansha, Guangzhou, where its China HQ is located. As you… Read More

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Sphero lays off dozens as it shifts focus to education

 Sphero was ready to conquer the world last year. The company quintupled its product release schedule, flying high with the help of a Disney licensing deal that gave the world several Star Wars droids and talking Spider-Man and Lightning McQueen robots. But following a holiday season that failed to live up to expectations, the company recently laid off 45 staff members globally, TechCrunch… Read More

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IBM led on patents in 2017, Facebook broke into top 50 for the first time

 Patents may sometimes get a bad rap for how they are abused (and misused) by some companies for commercial gain, but they also remain a marker of how a tech company is progressing with its R&D and pushing ahead on innovation. For one measure of that advance, today, IFI Claims, the patent analytics firm, published its 2017 list of companies with the most U.S. patents assigned for the year.… Read More

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GM and Cruise on track to field a self-driving ride hailing service by 2019

 GM and Cruise have articulated more specifically when they want to put their self-driving service on the roads, at today’s investor call for the company from San Francisco. GM said that they can make it happen within two years, with a fleet ready to go to work by 2019 based on the company’s current rate of progress. The commercial launch was previously revealed to happen within… Read More

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Expect GM Cruise self-driving vehicles to arrive in ‘quarters, not years’

 GM and Cruise are still reluctant to put any specific timeframes on their plans for self-driving vehicle deployment, but the company is getting a bit more specific about its intent to bring self-driving to market. It wants to do so only when it can manage it safely, at scale, and in busy urban markets where it’ll have the largest impact, according to GM President Dan Ammann – and… Read More

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Quantifying the driverless startup boom

 For driverless car startups, raising capital seems to happen on autopilot. Investors and acquirers have put billions into the space over the past couple of years in the race for early-mover advantage. They’ve shown no desire to hit the brakes lately either, as indicated by a spate of recent deals. Read More

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Smart toy startup Elemental Path introduces the STEMosaur, a robot kids can put together

 Elemental Path has come a long way since it debuted its first Cognitoy at Disrupt in 2016. The smart toy maker debuted on Kickstarter with an IBM Watson-powered toy dinosaur kids could talk to. It’s now launching a whole new dino robot, the STEMosaur. The new dino looks similar to Elemental’s original smart toy but is now a translucent green and lets kids put it together and… Read More

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O-Robotix spruces up its SeaDrone underwater robo-craft

 At last year’s Disrupt NY, SeaDrone made it to the Battlefield finals with its simple, robust and affordable underwater drone. With a few customers and a year of feedback under their belts, the engineers behind the robo-sub are putting out a version 2.0 with a few improvements. Read More

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A typical day for researchers on Google’s Brain Team

 What do you and researchers on Google’s Brain Team have most in common? You both probably spend a lot of time triaging email. In a Reddit AMA, 11 Google AI researchers took time to share the activities that consume the greatest chunks of their days. Email was a frequent topic of conversation, in addition to less banal activities like skimming academic papers and brainstorming with… Read More

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