Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 8.08
April 07, 2023
…the economy. The most visible and public example is SoftBank’s announcement that it will take Berkshire Grey private, paying $1.40 a share for the shares it does not already own. Remember that BG went public at $10 a share. I’ve had more than one venture capital firm tell me privately that it's no longer investing in robotics hardware companies. More than one robotics company told me that 2023 is the year their VCs expect them to become cash-flow positive. All in all, 2023 remains one of the most exciting times in our industry, and remember that we’re only a year…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 7.83
May 03, 2022
…in Tokyo, SB Logistics, the e-commerce fulfillment arm of SoftBank, is working to make a lights-out facility a reality. “Our ultimate goal is a completely automated warehouse,” said Masashi Okabe, a project manager and production engineer at SoftBank Robotics, and a member of the team that designed the highly automated 600,000-sq.-ft. facility in Ichikawa City. Part of that vision includes the development of a facility where a limited number of people are primarily there for maintenance and supervision, not warehouse processes. They’re not there yet. When the facility first adopted automation, inbound receiving and outbound shipping were still manual. In…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 7.48
April 19, 2022
…to future with Hyundai Since acquiring Boston Dynamics from SoftBank last year, Hyundai Motor Group has expressed strong interest in commercializing products such as Stretch. What are Hyundai's expectations? “Most people in the Americas think of Hyundai as a car company, but in South Korea, it's a manufacturing company, a logistics company, and a construction company,” Blankespoor said. “They've got a huge number of applications where they're excited to get robots more involved. In terms of future products that have more of a Hyundai influence, stay tuned.” In the meantime, Boston Dynamics is working with customers to start collecting key…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 7.47
August 05, 2022
…industrial applications. Hyundai Motor Group acquired the company from SoftBank Group Corp. in 2021. Since then, Boston Dynamics has demonstrated Spot in many different environments; offered the Stretch robot for unloading trucks; and continued to work with developers, software and sensor providers, and corporate customers. Last month, CEO Robert Playter joined Kiva Allgood, president and CEO of Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corp., at TCs Sessions: Robotics from TechCrunch. They discussed how their pioneering companies brought robots to market, from pilot testing to scaling manufacturing. Playter also replied to the following questions from Robotics 24/7 about Boston Dynamics' journey to commercialization.…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 7.03
February 24, 2021
…shareholders Khosla Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Canaan Partners and SoftBank Group Corp. rolling 100% of their equity into the combined company. The PIPE is anchored by Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder and CEO of Social Capital, Hedosophia and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock. At closing, BG expects to have approximately $507 million cash, which will be used to fund operations and support new and existing growth initiatives, and no debt on its balance sheet. All references to available cash from the trust account and retained transaction proceeds are subject to any redemptions by the public shareholders of RAAC and payment of…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 5.34
January 13, 2023
…successful at this, acquiring Brooks Automation's Semiconductor Solutions Group. SoftBank's $2.8 billion acquisition of 40% of AutoStore is the stuff of legends. Another axis of consolidation to consider is companies that possessed technology that couldn’t stand on its own but is cool. There are some really interesting components, like perception AI to predict traffic flows from camera data. That's abstract enough that very few end customers that know what to do with it. SVT is partnering with Ox on augmented reality picking. Integrating AMRs [autonomous mobile robots] with voice picking—there's so much upside from these types of human augmentation. We…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 5.30
July 23, 2021
…for store managers. In fact, at Walmart [which uses SoftBank's Whiz cleaning robots powered by BrainOS], it's good ROI if technology is not displacing people. It increased its number of robots this year by 200. What other applications besides cleaning does Brain enable? Thomason: We strategize a lot. We have extended, paid-for pilot with Sam's Club to do shelf scanning in 11 stores today. We are doing daily runs of shelf analytics with partners. We handle the data collection and localization, and they do OCR [optical character recognition] ad image analysis. We can do very precisely located images, which they've…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 4.83
October 14, 2023
…robots. Sybmotic recently announced that it is partnering with SoftBank Group on a joint venture called GreenBox to build out a network of automated, multi-tenant distribution centers (DCs). This introduced the concept of “warehouse as a service,” which is more than RaaS in that GreenBox would manage and run these automated DCs for multiple clients as a service. While many vendors see growing momentum for RaaS, traditional capital purchase has by no means gone away. “RaaS is definitely emerging, but the majority [of new customer wins] have continued to be capex deals,” said Noah Maynard, vice president of solutions architects…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 4.75
January 23, 2023
…heavily in talent: Frankert, for instance, previously worked at SoftBank Robotics, where he focused on technologies for micro-fulfillment centers in the 7,500 to 10,000 square foot range. Pallets of plants are moved by conveyor into the main grow area. Source: Jeff Fusco/Getty Images for Peerless Media. Optimizing automation According to Frankert, who joined the organization two years ago, Bowery Farming realized from the outset that software, technology, and automation Once plants are ready, they are harvested (top), and sorted and conveyed to packing (middle and bottom). Source: Jeff Fusco/Getty Images for Peerless Media. would be key to its success. If…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 4.14
December 02, 2019
…just got a $940 million in financing from Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund and has partnered with Kroger to deliver the groceries and with Domino’s to deliver the pizzas. KiwiBot is providing similar services for the university campus. The University of California at Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles were two of the earliest colleges to welcome the food delivery robots, KiwiBot. Drones as enablers for the future of logistics Companies such as DHL and Amazon are testing drones for last mile delivery. DHL has already tested Parcelcopter, a Microdrones md4-1000 UAV to deliver a package. Boeing has come…
