Military-Grade Tech to Monitor Eggplants Rather Than Explosives

On a rooftop in the Jewish-Arab Tel Aviv neighborhood of Jaffa, a former military technologist and an ex-journalist sit in a transparent bio-dome where their robot is busy learning how to grow food. Flux IoT’s Eddy, a robot measuring less than a foot tall and resembling a life buoy, is built with military-grade sensors and armed with image-processing technology.

How AI Is Changing The Way Companies Are Organized

Artificial Intelligence may still be in its infancy, but it’s already forcing leadership teams around the world to reconsider some of their core structures. Advances in technology are causing firms to restructure their organizational makeup, transform their HR departments, develop new training models, and reevaluate their hiring practices.

Sequoia-Backed China Robot Startup Said to Be Raising New Funds

Makeblock Co., a Chinese maker of DIY robotics parts, is seeking to raise funding at a $200 million valuation as the Sequoia Capital-backed startup expands into classrooms and hobbyist’s workshops globally, people familiar with the matter said. The Shenzhen-based company us seeking to raise about 200 million yuan in a series B round, the people said, requesting not to be named discussing a private matter.

Sequoia-Backed China Robot Startup Said to Be Raising New Funds

Makeblock Co., a Chinese maker of DIY robotics parts, is seeking to raise funding at a $200 million valuation as the Sequoia Capital-backed startup expands into classrooms and hobbyist’s workshops globally, people familiar with the matter said. The Shenzhen-based company us seeking to raise about 200 million yuan in a series B round, the people said, requesting not to be named discussing a private matter.

CUBAN: Don’t go to school for finance – liberal arts is the…

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban offered a perhaps bleak prediction on the future of jobs in an interview Friday with Bloomberg’s Cory Johnson at the NBA All-Star Technology Summit in New Orleans. Discussing the swiftly evolving nature of jobs due to automation , he noted that across a broad array of industries, robots will replace human workers.

iRobot Crushes Expectations With a Record Quarter

But with shares of the home-robotics specialist down around 9% in after-hours trading as of this writing, it seems the market isn’t pleased. To be fair, iRobot stock had also climbed more than 80% over the past year and traded near an all-time high leading up to this report, thanks to several stronger-than-expected quarterly performances in 2016.

iRobot Crushes Expectations With a Record Quarter

But with shares of the home-robotics specialist down around 9% in after-hours trading as of this writing, it seems the market isn’t pleased. To be fair, iRobot stock had also climbed more than 80% over the past year and traded near an all-time high leading up to this report, thanks to several stronger-than-expected quarterly performances in 2016.

Orbital ATK sues Pentagon over plans to award a space robots contract to a Canadian-owned firm

Orbital ATK, a Dulles-based aerospace manufacturer, is suing the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency over plans to award a Canadian firm a $15 million contract to build a fleet of space-faring robots capable of repairing government and commercial satellites. Orbital argues the federal program, called the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites, would unfairly compete with its own privately funded effort, a system called the Mission Extension Vehicle 1, backed by at least $200 million from investors.

Elon Musk really isn’t as aligned with Trump on manufacturing…

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is now part of two advisory committees under President Donald Trump: the economic advisory board and the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative . He has met with Trump on two separate occasions, once with tech leaders in New York, and once earlier this week at the White House for a discussion on US manufacturing.

Will Robots Usher In A Utopia Or Dystopia?

Peter Frase’s new book imagines multiple scenarios and lays out some touch choices we’re going to have to make. Will our future of robots and autonomous cars turn out to be a dystopia or a utopia? That’s the question that author Peter Frase grapples with in his new book, Four Futures: Life After Capitalism .

At CES, voice assistants speak up

In the very near future, instead of controlling your gadgets by pressing buttons or tapping on screens, you may just talk to them. Intelligent assistant technology like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Echo is starting to spread widely.

Automation Trepidation

Decades from now, when historians look back on 2016, they’ll of course take note of the momentous votes on both sides of the Atlantic. But if they’re interested in symbolism, they might find that an even more profound turning point occurred over the English countryside in early December, when a little flying robot buzzed  though the air, alighted on a lawn and gently deposited a package for a happy customer.

These Are The Robots Who Are Fulfilling Your Christmas Orders

Partly in response to an improving labor market that’s made seasonal warehouse worker shortages a staple of year-end news coverage for the past several years, more logistics operations are turning to robots to make operations more efficient. “What we find a lot of our customers are experiencing challenges in, especially as you think about what happens to an operation as you enter into the holiday season, is quite simply there’s not enough people to do the work that’s required,” says Matt Rendall, cofounder and CEO of Clearpath Robotics .

iRobot’s Roomba 980 Dominates a New Competitor

The primary task of robotic vacuum cleaners might seem pretty straightforward — to navigate any given room and clean up the mess — but it turns out that’s easier said than done. Andto the benefit of home robotics specialist iRobot Corporation In an effort to compare the latest and greatest high-end robotic vacuums last week, theRossen Reports team over at Today featured both the Dyson 360 Eye and iRobot’s Roomba 980 in their “Does It Work?” special series.