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Iván Hernández Dalas: Pudu Robotics raises nearly $150M as it targets industrial applications

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Pudu offers a range of robots for service delivery, commercial cleaning, industrial delivery, and general embodied AI. | Source: Pudu Robotics Pudu Technology Inc. today said it has it raised nearly $150 million in a new funding round. Following this round, the company claimed that its valuation has exceeded $1.5 billion, and its cumulative funding exceeds $300 million. “This funding milestone is a powerful validation of Pudu’s industry leadership, product and technological strength, global brand, and commercial infrastructure,” said Felix Zhang, founder and CEO of Pudu Robotics. “Backed by our strategic investors and industrial partners, Pudu will continue to push the boundaries of embodied AI and commercial service robotics. We remain committed to innovating with the spirit of an inventor and leveraging a global vision to accelerate robot adoption, elevating the industry to new heights in the global value chain.” Pudu said it is a global leader in service robotics , focusing it...

Iván Hernández Dalas: End of an era: Honeywell hands warehouse automation reins to AIP

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The Honeywell Intelligrated division is known for anything from conveyors to ASRS, advanced robotics, and hybrid strategies. | Credit: Honeywell Honeywell announced today that it is selling its Warehouse and Workflow Solutions (WWS) business (comprised of the Intelligrated and Transnorm brands) to American Industrial Partners , a private equity firm focused on industrial businesses. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of 2026. Intelligrated and Transnorm are leading providers of supply chain and warehouse automation projects, products, and services, generating approximately $935 million in revenue in 2025. Details of the deal were undisclosed. WWS will build on AIP’s existing investment in Trew Automation , creating a complementary and differentiated platform to better serve customers across a wide range of industries. “As demand for warehouse automation continues to grow, driven by e-commerce, labor shortages, and supply chain digitization, WWS is we...

Iván Hernández Dalas: Reliable Robotics raises funding for fully automated aircraft

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The Reliable Autonomy System is intended for both civilian and military aircraft. Source: Reliable Robotics Reliable Robotics Corp. this week announced $160 million in new funding to accelerate deployment and scale production of the Reliable Autonomy System, or RAS, which it said is the first Federal Aviation Administration-certifiable system enabling fully automated operation of an aircraft. “Aviation is vital to our economy and national security, but to meet demand, it needs to be able to scale safely,” stated Robert Rose, co-founder and CEO of Reliable Robotics. “Automation eases constraints, enabling us to realize greater levels of throughput at even higher levels of safety.” Founded in 2017, Reliable Robotics said it has designed RAS to work on any aircraft, in any airspace, and to directly address the most common causes of aviation incidents. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said its certifiable autonomy can lead to safer, more affordable, and more scalable air trans...

Iván Hernández Dalas: Learn about the latest advancements in healthcare robotics at the Robotics Summit & Expo

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Source: AdobeStock The medical robotics market is a quickly growing industry. According to Fortune Business Insights , the market was valued at $18.98 billion in 2025. The research firm expects it to grow to $74.07 billion by 2034, representing a CAGR of 16.33%. The Robotics Summit & Expo, which takes place May 27-28, 2026, in Boston, Mass., will feature an entire session track focused on healthcare robotics. This track will include: Scaling Soft Wearable Robots from the Lab to the Market:  Connor Walsh, a professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard , will cover how academic research can move rapidly toward commercialization through user-centered design, clinical validation, and strategic partnerships. Best Practices for Force-Torque Sensing in Surgical Robotics:  Robert Brooks, the CEO of ForceN , will give an overview of the roles of force and torque sensing in surgical robotics, including tip of instrument sensing, trocar remote center of motion/tiss...

Iván Hernández Dalas: Crewline secures $7.1M to automate construction’s most repetitive task

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Crewline has developed an autonomy solution for soil compactors that can be installed in an hour, providing a self-driving capability. | Source: Crewline Addressing a structural labor crisis that forces contractors to cancel nearly two-thirds of their jobs, San Francisco startup Crewline has secured a $7.1 million seed round to deploy an autonomous retrofit kit for construction rollers. By transforming the jobsite’s most repetitive and least-desired task into a self-driving operation, the company is leveraging a “wedge” strategy to tackle a workforce shortage of nearly 500,000 workers. It has already amassed a $26 million waitlist of contractors eager to scale productivity without adding headcount. CEO and co-founder Frederik Filz-Reiterdank leads a lean four-person team that is developing the new construction automation solution. Already on version six, the company is shipping a new kit revision roughly every 3 weeks. Filz-Reiterdank told The Robot Report that “labor availabilit...

Iván Hernández Dalas: Sony AI table tennis robot outplays elite human players

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Ace rotates its paddle as it prepares to return the ball back to its human opponent, Yamato Kawamata, during a match in December 2025. Credit: Sony AI. In an article published today in Nature , Sony AI introduce Ace, the first robot to beat elite human players in competitive physical sport. Although AI systems have shown advanced performance in digital domains and board games (such as complex video games, chess and Go), translating this to physical performance has remained a significant challenge. Such a feat requires perception, planning, and control to work in a high-speed domain on the scale of milliseconds. Table tennis is a demanding and complex real-world test for robotics, requiring rapid decision-making, precise physical execution, and continuous adaptation to an unpredictable opponent. The ball’s high speed, spin, and complex trajectories are central to competitive play. Director of Sony AI in Zürich, and project lead for Ace, Peter Dürr said “this research has shown that a...

Iván Hernández Dalas: HII partners with Path Robotics, GrayMatter Robotics to accelerate shipbuilding

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Path Robotics’ latest release is the Rove mobile robotic welding system. | Source: Path Robotics HII, Path Robotics, and GrayMatter Robotics this week introduced the High-Yield Production Robotics, or  HYPR, program. It seeks to use a network of emerging physical AI technologies from Path Robotics and GrayMatter Robotics to rapidly accelerate advanced, adaptive automation in the fabrication process of both crewed and uncrewed naval platforms. “Integrating our partnerships into one HYPR team will enable us to leverage each other’s best-in-class capabilities to accelerate shipbuilding throughput, strengthen the maritime industrial base, and augment our shipbuilding work,” said Eric Chewning, executive vice president of maritime systems and corporate strategy at HII. “This HYPR initiative will allow us to apply next-generation robotics to complex, variable shipbuilding tasks that have been difficult to fully automate.” HYPR, developed with support from Huntington Ingalls Industri...