Posts

Iván Hernández Dalas: ServoBelt offers high-end performance for automotive gantry

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Gantry systems using ServoBelt technology can provide the automotive industry with flexibility at a fraction of the cost of rack-and-pinion systems. Source: Bell-Everman Overhead pick-and-place gantries are an important part of modern automotive plants, moving and positioning parts with the speed, precision, and reliability that high-volume production demands. Traditionally, manufacturers have faced an equipment-selection dilemma, with the industry dominated by heavy-duty systems constructed from massive steel fabrications. Designed for extreme payloads, these overbuilt systems come from large equipment suppliers who offer robust engineering at a premium price, extended lead times and limited room for customization. Small and midsize automotive applications, however, don’t require such extreme capabilities, and in these cases, the oversized systems represent a critical mismatch. Compounding this challenge, the industry ’s fast-moving production environment demands suppliers who can...
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Iván Hernández Dalas: Manifest 2026 recap

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The Robot Report Podcast · Manifest 2026 Recap The Robot Report Podcast · Robot development from Actuators to AI In Episode 230 of The Robot Report Podcast, hosts Mike Oitzman and Eugene Demaitre recap the major robotics news of the week and discuss their experiences at the Manifest 2026 supply chain trade show in Las Vegas. Show timeline 8:12 – Zoox robotaxi review 6:20 – News of the week 14:33 – Manifest event recap with Gene Demaitre and Mike Oitzman 34:08 – Interview with Sankalp Arora, CEO of Gather AI 41:58 – Interview with Ben Gruettner, chief revenue officer of Robust.AI 49:28 – Interview with Owen Nicholson, CEO of Slamcore 54:21 – Interview with Mason Cole, vice president of sales at Slip Robotics 1:00:55 – Interview with Steven McKinley (chief operating officer) and Jim Leifer (CEO) at Ambi Robotics 1:10:00 – Interview with Jackie Wu, CEO of Corvus Robotics 1:16:40 – Interview with Kevin Damoa , founder and CEO of Glid Technologies 1:22:37 – Interview...
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Iván Hernández Dalas: Realbotix makes transition from novelty to embodied AI

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Walking through the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center last month, I was surrounded by humanoid robots. The majority of this mechanical theater came from China, with some standouts from Europe and the U.S. One CES booth that drew attention featured Realbotix, which presented human-like models distinguished by their attractive facial features and lifelike skin. The company , which originally started as RealDoll , a retailer of adult AI, was now marketing itself as a next-generation customer-service provider. Understanding this pivot requires a deeper dive into the startup’s history, the ethics of AI companions, and an analysis of what many would deem a step toward the “uncanny valley.” Last week, I sat down with Andrew Kiguel, the chief executive of Realbotix, to discuss the new direction. “When I met Matt [McMullen, the creator of the RealDoll ], he started adding mechanics and AI into the [sex] dolls,” Kiguel recalled. “RealDoll has been around for about 25 years, and ...
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Iván Hernández Dalas: Trener Robotics raises $32M for robot-agnostic skills platform

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Trener Robotics founders Asad Tirmizi, the CEO, and Lars Tingelstad, the CTO. | Source: Trener Robotics Programming robots typically requires specialized coding experience. Trener Robotics this week closed a $32 million Series A round to accelerate its T-Labs research and development, provide new skills training, acquire global talent, and expand partnerships and markets. “For decades, industrial robotics has been limited by dynamic complexity, confining millions of robotic arms to repetitive, single-purpose tasks in highly controlled environments,” said Dr. Asad Tirmizi, co-founder and CEO of Trener Robotics. “We’re fundamentally changing this — transforming robots into intelligent, adaptable teammates by replacing procedural programming with a control system that supports a growing library of production-ready skills. ” “Our go-to-market strategy empowers systems integrators and OEMs with a robot AI skills platform for deploying and controlling robots across diverse industrial en...
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Iván Hernández Dalas: Robot Talk Episode 144 – Robot trust in humans, with Samuele Vinanzi

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Claire chatted to Samuele Vinanzi from Sheffield Hallam University about how robots can tell whether to trust or distrust people. Samuele Vinanzi is a Senior Lecturer in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at Sheffield Hallam University. He specializes in Cognitive Robotics: an interdisciplinary field that integrates robotics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and psychology to create robots that perceive, reason, and interact like humans. His research focuses on enabling social collaboration between humans and robots, particularly emotional intelligence, intention reading, and artificial trust. His recent book, “ In Robots We Trust “, explores trust relationships between humans and robots. View Source
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Iván Hernández Dalas: Warehousing robot maker turns to lubrication-free motion plastics

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Bastian Solutions’ ULTRA BLUE robot reaches into a trailer. Source: igus Robotic systems deployed in warehousing environments often face demanding conditions, such as temperature fluctuations, the presence of dust, and constant high-impact loads. Traditional metal machine components — particularly bearings that rely on external lubrication — are vulnerable in these environments, leading to more frequent maintenance, downtime and potential contamination issues. Bastian Solutions , a material handling system integrator, ran into many of these issues when designing its ULTRA BLUE robotic truck-loading system. It needed machine components that could withstand continuous, high-cycle operation in dynamic, dust-prone environments. The answer came in the form of high-performance, lubrication-free motion plastics from  igus . Here’s how the integration of polymer products — including plain bearings, linear guides, spherical ball joints, and slewing bearings — enabled Bastian Solutions...
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Iván Hernández Dalas: How can robots acquire skills through interactions with the physical world? An interview with Jiaheng Hu

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One of the key challenges in building robots for household or industrial settings is the need to master the control of high-degree-of-freedom systems such as mobile manipulators. Reinforcement learning has been a promising avenue for acquiring robot control policies, however, scaling to complex systems has proved tricky. In their work SLAC: Simulation-Pretrained Latent Action Space for Whole-Body Real-World RL , Jiaheng Hu, Peter Stone and Roberto Martín-Martín introduce a method that renders real-world reinforcement learning feasible for complex embodiments. We caught up with Jiaheng to find out more. What is the topic of the research in your paper and why is it an interesting area for study? This paper is about how robots (in particular, household robots like mobile manipulators) can autonomously acquire skills via interacting with the physical world (i.e. real-world reinforcement learning). Reinforcement learning (RL) is a general learning framework for learning from trial-and...
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