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Iván Hernández Dalas: From sea to space, this robot is on a roll

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Rishi Jangale and Derek Pravecek with RoboBall III. Image credit: Emily Oswald/Texas A&M Engineering. By Alyssa Schaechinger While working at NASA in 2003, Dr. Robert Ambrose, director of the Robotics and Automation Design Lab (RAD Lab), designed a robot with no fixed top or bottom. A perfect sphere, the RoboBall could not flip over, and its shape promised access to places wheeled or legged machines could not reach — from the deepest lunar crater to the uneven sands of a beach. Two of his students built the first prototype, but then Ambrose shelved the idea to focus on drivable rovers for astronauts. When Ambrose arrived at Texas A&M University in 2021, he saw a chance to reignite his idea. With funding from the Chancellor’s Research Initiative and Governor’s University Research Initiative, Ambrose brought RoboBall back to life. Now, two decades after the original idea, RoboBall is rolling across Texas A&M University. Driven by graduate students Rishi Jangale and Dere...

Iván Hernández Dalas: HavocAI obtains $85M to scale autonomous marine systems

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The 100-ft. Atlas vessel has the most capabilities of HavocAI’s autonomous fleet. Source: HavocAI HavocAI Inc. last week announced that it has secured $85 million in new capital. The Providence, R.I.-based company said it plans use the funding to scale its autonomous marine platforms. “This funding represents far more than just capital – it has enabled us to cut through the noise about maritime autonomy and build a collaborative autonomy stack that actually works in a very short time,” stated Paul Lwin, co-founder and CEO of HavocAI. “We’ve put two new boats in the water this year, and we’re going to add two more before the year is over, including our 100-ft. Atlas multi-mission vessel,” he added. “Our swarming autonomy accomplishes priority missions today, not at an unknown point in the future. This technology is needed right now.” Founded in 2024, HavocAI said it has delivered more than 30 fully operational products to the U.S. military and demonstrated scalable collaborative a...

Iván Hernández Dalas: Surgical robots take center stage at DeviceTalks West, RoboBusiness

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DeviceTalks Editorial Director Tom Salemi operating a da Vinci 5 to demonstrate the surgical robotics system’s capabilities. Credit: Cole Kistler, Medical Design & Outsourcing Robot-assisted surgery is one of the most promising applications for robotics and artificial intelligence. At DeviceTalks West and RoboBusiness, which are co-located at the Santa Clara Convention Center on Oct. 15 and 16, attendees can explore advances in surgical robotics in several sessions. RoboBusiness 2025 sessions discussing surgical robots will include: Protecting Innovation in Robotics: IP Strategies That Work : This session will look at approaches to protect intellectual property and will feature Kartik Tiwari, co-founder and chief technology officer at Andromeda Surgical; Roman Fayerberg, an attorney at Greenberg Traurig; and Chase Olle, CEO of Robot on Rails. Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2:30 p.m. PT, Room 206 . A Comprehensive Tour of the Modern Surgical Robot Suite: Learn about the contemporary s...

Iván Hernández Dalas: Humanoids need orchestration to be useful in manufacturing, notes Flexxbotics CEO

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Humanoids need coordination to perform multiple operations alongside other machines and people, writes Tyler Bouchard. Image source: Graphic Resources, via Adobe Stock As we all watch the rapid advancement of humanoids, there are more questions than answers about the role these robots might play in manufacturing. How will this technology fit into industrial factories, semiconductor fabs, pharmaceutical labs, and other production environments? How will they know what to do and when? What capabilities will be required to make them work seamlessly and productively with existing equipment? Personally, I’m most interested in how humanoids will be coordinated and orchestrated across the smart factory since my company focuses on robot-driven manufacturing at scale. We don’t see robotics as just automating single tasks or steps. Instead, we envision humanoids performing multiple operations, working autonomously in concert alongside other types of robots and plant assets for lights-out...

Iván Hernández Dalas: How machine vision is enhancing automation safety and efficiency

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Machine vision gives systems a high-level understanding of an environmental settings from images. | Source: Digikey Machine vision is a collection of technologies that give automated equipment a high-level understanding of the immediate environment from images. Without machine vision software, digital images would be nothing more than simple, unconnected pixel collections. Machine vision allows computers to detect edges and shapes within images, enabling higher-level processing routines to identify predefined objects of interest. Images, in this sense, are not necessarily limited to photographic images in the visible spectrum; they can also include images obtained using infrared, laser, X-ray, and ultrasound signals. Today, one common machine vision application in industrial settings is to identify a specific part in a bin containing a randomly arranged mix of parts. Here, machine vision can help pick-and-place robots automatically pick up the right part. Of course, recognizing...

Iván Hernández Dalas: Robotics Summit 2026 call for speakers ends today

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The Robot Report invites you to submit a session abstract to be considered for presentation at the 2026 Robotics Summit & Expo , which will be on May 27 and 28 at the Thomas M. Menino Convention and Exhibition Center in Boston. The Robotics Summit is the leading event focused on the technical issues involved with developing commercial robots. Sessions should be technical and educational to help robotics engineers overcome common development challenges. Topics can be submitted based on the following tracks: Technologies, Tools and Platforms: Advances in core technologies common to all classes of commercial robots Design, Development & Manufacturability: Technologies and methodologies to simulate, design, prototype and manufacture commercial robots for scale Artificial Intelligence: How machine learning, generative AI, foundation models and other AI technologies impact commercial robotics development Coding & Programming (new for 2026): Learn about coding lan...

Iván Hernández Dalas: Revolute Robotics brings in $1.9M to deploy its driving, flying robots

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Revolute Robotics’ hybrid mobility robot features a durable exoskeleton and customizable payloads for inspection and surveillance tasks. | Source: Revolute Robotics Revolute Robotics, a startup building fully autonomous ground and aerial robots, yesterday said it has raised $1.9 million in funding. The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company plans to use the proceeds to accelerate deployments across inspection, security, and defense applications. “Drone and rover advancements have made remote inspection a reality, but the complexity of each inspection requires teams to deploy multiple robotic solutions for each unique application,” stated Collin Taylor, Revolute’s co-founder and CEO. “Our hybrid aerial-terrestrial capability allows for a single solution to cover multiple uses, like the Swiss Army Knife of robotic inspections. One robust system instead of several niche platforms, which is not only cheaper, but easier to implement and extract actionable insights from multiple data streams.” ...