robotics

Meet me at the dog run

You’ll have to forgive me, I spent most of the morning thinking and writing about VR. In the lead-up to Apple’s expected headset announcement at WWDC next week, I did a one-person crash course int

Serve Robotics to deploy up to 2,000 sidewalk delivery bots on Uber Eats

Serve Robotics, the Uber spinout that builds autonomous sidewalk delivery robots, is expanding its partnership with Uber Eats. The Nvidia-backed startup will now deploy up to 2,000 of its cute little

Venture leasing: The unsung hero for hardware startups struggling to raise capital

Just because a capital-intensive company needs funding, it doesn’t have to accept the first financing offer it receives.

Going for a walk with Shift’s Moonwalker electric shoe-skates

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to see someone skate-walking down the halls of Detroit’s Huntington Place convention center. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of interesting stuff hap

TechCrunch+ roundup: Psychedelics VC survey, how to run an AI pilot, Europe’s robotics renaissance

Psychedelic startups want to make psilocybin, ketamine and other substances more mainstream, but how are investors approaching this space?

Europe could be on the cusp of a golden era in robotics. Here’s why

For Europe, it seems like the old wisdom of not putting all of your eggs in one basket could be their biggest competitive advantage.

Shopify sells 6 River Systems to new owner

Shopify last week announced that it would be the latest big tech firm to undergo mass layoffs. The company is cutting 20% of its 11,600-person staff. The news arrived during earnings that beat Wall St

Viam’s robot prototyping software hits general availability

When I visited Viam’s Manhattan offices late last year, I was struck by two things. First, there’s a killer view of Lincoln Center. As the weather is getting warmer and they’re starting to do th

TechCrunch+ roundup: VC robotics survey, Visa Bulletin update, SaaS engagement metrics

Autonomous tractors, semi trucks and warehouse restocking bots have gone from concept to reality. Is robotics mainstream now?

13 VCs talk about the state of robotics investing in 2023

We spoke to 13 of the top robotics VCs to discuss where the category is and what the future looks like.

The robots are already here

In a blog post published last week, Meta asks, “Where are the robots?” The answer is simple. They’re here. You just need to know where to look. It’s a frustrating answer. I recognize that. Let

Covariant’s CEO on building AI that helps robots learn

Covariant was founded in 2017 with a simple goal: helping robots learn how to better pick up objects. It’s a large need among those looking to automate warehouses, and one that is much more complex

Conventional wisdom

If you’d told me five years ago that I would be flying to Chicago in March to attend a supply chain and logistics show, you would have been greeted by a momentary blank stare, followed by the image

Nimble makes the leap to fully automated third-party logistics warehouses

There’s a long-standing debate in the world of logistics robotics. On one side stand the greenfield folk, who insist that the best possible experience is one built from the ground up, with these aut

Mistakes were made (and that’s fine)

Forgive the scattered nature of this week’s Actuator. No big, overarching monologs this week — just a handful of things I’ve been thinking about lately that I’d like to get down on paper. I su

OpenAI launches an API for ChatGPT, a startup attempts a humanoid robot, and Salesforce turns it around

TGIF, my TechCrunch homies. It’s that time of week again — the time for Week in Review, where we recap the past five days in tech news. As always, lots happened, so let’s dig in sans

Barcelona nights

I’ve yet to walk the entire floor at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year (that’s the goal for this afternoon), but my sense is the majority of the robots present fit into one of two categ

Swap’s robotic mowers score $7M in seed funding

Swap Robotics entered our orbit last year, when the firm was a finalist for our Battlefield competition at Disrupt 2022. In a world full of robot mowers, the startup grabbed the judges’ attention wi

Toyota Research Institute’s robots leave home

“I think I’m probably just as guilty as everybody else,” Toyota Research Institute’s (TRI) senior vice president of robotics, Max Bajracharya, admits. “It’s like, now our GPUs are

FRIDA’s robot arm attempts to bring DALL-E-style AI art to real-world canvases

One could make a very reasonable argument that FRIDA (Framework and Robotics Initiative for Developing Arts) is as much a thought experiment as it is a research project. Certainly it butts up against
Load More