High above the Earth, a new generation of robots designed to keep satellites working longer is replacing its predecessor — quite literally. This week, a spacecraft built and operated by Northrop Grumman called a Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) unplugged from a communications satellite operated by the Australian firm Optus. For more than a year, the
The Trump administration is banning the import of new foreign-made humanoid robots, robot dogs and energy inverters, citing an “unacceptable” threat to national security. The measure largely affects imports from China, which currently has the vast majority of global market share. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the ban on Tuesday, stating that foreign-made
Several robotics companies are tackling one of the toughest problems in AI: building basic models capable of executing tasks they were never explicitly trained to perform. Their approaches run the gamut: from studying millions of web videos and running computer simulations to collecting motion data from humans performing tasks while wearing gloves with embedded sensors.
The frontier of physical AI is a game of Jenga in a warehouse in San Leandro, California. That warehouse is occupied by Encord, a company that builds data tools used to train AI models. Andrew Ceja is a pilot (the company’s term for its robotic trainers) and he’s carefully removing blocks of wood from a
Travis Kalanick’s robotics company Atoms has raised $1.7 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Ben Horowitz will join the company’s board of directors following the investment. Bain Capital, Fifth Wall and others participated in the round. Perhaps most notably, Uber also joined the funding round, reconnecting Kalanick with the company he founded,
Following liftoff from Cape Canaveral on July 21 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Robotic Mission Vehicle (MRV) hosting the NASA-backed Robotic Geosynchronous Satellite Servicing (RSGS) payload is now en route to geosynchronous Earth orbit, where it will use its advanced robotics to service spacecraft. RSGS leverages NASA’s space robotics expertise, aligned with the
