Ivan Hernandez Dalas - Mechatronics

Claire chatted to Ahti Heinla from Starship Technologies about their AI-powered delivery robots that operate independently on streets and pavements. Ahti Heinla is the co-founder and CEO of Starship Technologies , the world’s leading autonomous delivery company building AI-powered robots that operate fully independently in real-world environments. One of the original engineers behind Skype’s billion-dollar success, Ahti later made a quiet pivot into robotics, spending the past decade advancing practical, consumer-facing AI. Under his leadership, Starship has completed more than 10 million autonomous deliveries with a fleet of over 2,700 robots navigating streets, pavements, weather, and people, without human intervention. View Source

Hirebotics’ Beacon is a cloud-based automation platform that lets fabricators teach, run, and monitor welding, cutting, and painting cobots without programming. | Source: Hirebotics We’ve been writing about collaborative robots – often referred to as cobots – for more than a decade, but their use in real applications has reached an all-time high. Cobots now represent 18% of total North American robot units, according to the latest report from the Association for Advancing Automation ( A3 ), with roughly 90% of all cobot orders originating from non-automotive sectors such as food and consumer goods, semiconductors and electronics, and life sciences. The metal fabrication, palletizing , and data center construction industries are also adopting robots at a record pace, according to Matt Bush, the co-founder and new CEO of Hirebotics, a Nashville-based cobot solutions provider specializing in metal fabrication and related industries. Bush spoke with The Robot Report about how f...

The  Robotics Summit & Expo will come to an end this afternoon, and we want to make sure you get the most out of the premiere event for commercial robotics developers. Day 2 will start at 8:00 a.m. ET with the  Women in Robotics Breakfast . The sold-out breakfast will include a talk from Joyce Sidopoulos, co-founder and chief of operations at MassRobotics , and Mikell Taylor, head of robotics strategy at GM . It will be in Room 254 A-B. At 9:05 a.m., Brian Gerkey, the board chair of Open Robotics and chief technology officer of Intrinsic , will lead the keynote talk “An Open Foundation for the Age of AI-Powered Robots.” This will be followed by a keynote from Taylor called, “What Makes a Robot Worthy?” The second keynote will start at 10:00 a.m. On Day 2, the exhibit hall will be open from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The Robotics Summit & Expo will close at 3:30 p.m. with a final keynote, “Rewiring What’s Possible: A New Era of Human Potential.” During this talk, Noland Arb...

MIT engineers and colleagues have developed a soft, flexible gel that dramatically changes its conductivity upon the application of light. This figure shows a soft, stretchable circuit created with a rectangular bar of the gel. A copper electrode is attached to the left. A stylus and associated metal network connects the electrode to three “stations” on the bar. Light has been shone on the first two stations, creating conductivity that turns on each station’s lightbulb. Because the third station has not been exposed to light it is nonconductive and the bulb is off. Credits: Image courtesy of the Wallin lab. Consider the chief difference between living systems and electronics: The first is generally soft and squishy, while the latter is hard and rigid. Now, in work that could impact human-machine interfaces, biocompatible devices, soft robotics, and more, MIT engineers and colleagues have developed a soft, flexible gel that dramatically changes its conductivity upon the application of ...

Cornell researchers used stretchable fiber-optic sensors to create a soft robot gripper that can predict the ripeness of strawberries by touch. Credit: Anand Mishra. By David Nutt When assessing the ripeness of fruit, sight and smell can tell you a lot, but the best indicator is often how the fruit feels. Cornell researchers used stretchable fiber-optic sensors to create a soft robot gripper that can predict the ripeness of strawberries by touch, then gently twist them off their branch or vine without causing any damage. The technology, developed in the lab of Rob Shepherd , the John F. Carr Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Cornell Duffield College of Engineering, could lead to more resilient and ecological food production and increase the availability of fruit species that are difficult to cultivate. Shepherd’s Organic Robotics Lab previously demonstrated the potential of stretchable fiber-optic sensors to give soft robotic systems the ability to feel the same dynami...

The Robotics Summit & Expo is here! The show is bringing together over 5,000 developers focused on building robots for aerospace and defense, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, and other markets. We’ll be kicking things off at 9:00 a.m. ET at the Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center in Boston with two back-to-back keynotes in Room 253 ABC. The first is called “ Building the Next Era of Robot Autonomy .” That panel will feature insights from Aaron Parness, the director of applied science at Amazon Robotics ; Anders Beck, vice president of AI robotics products at Universal Robots ; Hamid Montazeri, the senior vice president of software and AI at  Locus Robotics ; and John Wall, the president of  QNX . The second panel, “ The State of Humanoids ,” will start at 10:00 a.m. It will include Al Makke, the head of humanoid robotics in North America for Schaeffler ; Mike Nielsen, the chief marketing officer at  RealSense ; Aaron Prather, th...