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Mercedes-Benz is the latest automotive company to trial how humanoid robots could be used to automate “low skill, physically challenging, manual labor.” On Friday, robotics company Apptronik announced it had entered into a commercial agreement with Mercedes to pilot how “highly advanced robotics” like Apollo — Apptronik’s 160-pound bipedal robot — can be used in … Read more
Perhaps a few years from now, the halls of the Georgia World Congress Center will be peppered with humanoid robots the week of Modex. In 2024, however, Digit stands alone at the supply chain show. It’s a testament to Agility’s healthy head start over competitors like Figure, Tesla, 1X and Apptronik. This time last year … Read more
Photo: Around the World Photos (Shutterstock) While Optimus has no stated use cases yet, one idea many have floated is that they’d make good factory workers. Tesla has already automated much of its car-making process, using enormous robot arms to move heavy car panels. However, Optimus could be a useful robot to do more delicate … Read more
Silicon Valley is racing to create the first generation of “humanoid” robots, with many tech companies promising consumers that they’ll soon have their very own, live-in robo-helper to do the dishes, sweep the floor, and generally take care of all the annoying housework that you don’t want to do. However, the unfortunate truth is that, … Read more
A version of this post first appeared in TechCrunch’s weekly robotics newsletter, Actuator. Subscribe here. Last week was a busy one for robotics. We had RoboBusiness in the Bay, ROSCon in New Orleans and Amazon’s Delivering the Future event in Seattle. I ended up choosing the latter, as I’d gotten quite a bit out of … Read more
Announced amid a deluge of news at this week’s Delivering the Future event in Seattle was word that Amazon will begin testing Agility’s Digit in a move that could bring the bipedal robot to its nationwide fulfillment centers. It’s baby steps as these things go, and such early-stage deals don’t necessary mean something bigger down … Read more
Eight years in the past, the Pentagon’s Protection Superior Analysis Tasks Company organized a painful-to-watch contest that concerned robots slowly struggling (and infrequently failing) to carry out a sequence of human duties, together with opening doorways, working energy instruments, and driving golf carts. Clips of them fumbling and stumbling by means of the Darpa Robotics Problem … Read more
Jeff Cardenas pulls out his MacBook. Apptronik’s co-founder and CEO has a slideshow he needs to point out, operating down the Austin startup’s seven-year historical past. It does, certainly, take a little bit of contextualizing. Like many fellow robotics companies, the corporate was fueled by authorities contracts in its earliest days. First up was Valkyrie … Read more