Compiler is a weekly article that gathers the best stories on robots and drones from the past week. From stories on our blog to other popular sites, here are the week’s best stories you don’t want to miss.
nuTonomy Raises $16 Million Series A
nuTonomy is a Singapore-based startup developing a fleet of self-driving taxis to make transportation more readily available. With companies like Google and Uber revving up their efforts for self-driving cars, nuTonomy is aiming to outpace the competition by launching commercial offerings by 2018. The startup announced today that it has raised a $16 million in Series A funding.
Xiaomi Mi Drone Rivals DJI
Xiaomi, one of China’s largest consumer electronics brands, just unveiled it’s first foray into the drone market, a consumer quadcopter dubbed Mi Drone. It’s your standard consumer quadcopter that looks a lot like what is already on the market, and according to the launch event that live streamed on the company’s website today, Mi Drone boasts quite a bang for your buck.
Orbii, A Home Security Robot
Orbii is a robotic ball that rolls around your house, patrolling for any running refrigerators, mischievous pets, or lurking intruders. The robot sports a 720p camera, a microphone, and a speaker so you can monitor your house in high definition and listen out for anything. You drive Orbii around using a smartphone or tablet app, and it works from any distance by connecting to your home’s wireless network. Video is streamed to the app and is saved locally on the device or in a secure cloud server.
Vantage Robotics Delays Its Snap Drone
San Francisco-based drone startup Vertical Robotics has delayed their anticipated quadcopter, Snap. The drone, designed to be a portable and safe flying camera, has been delayed for shipping until September. Notable improvements to extend the battery life past twenty minutes, and provide consistent 4K video are being finalized and will be ready to ship to the first five percent of pre-orders in July. Vertical Robotics plans to have all pre-orders shipped in September.
JumpRoACH Robotic Insect
From IEEE Automaton:
“At Seoul National University, South Korea, researchers have developed a new kind of jumping mechanism for robots that can potentially scale from itty bitty hops all the way up to aircraft carrier catapult launch (or almost). In collaboration with UC Berkeley, they’ve managed to stuff this thing into a familiar hexapedal crawler that we’re all familiar with (DASH), with the end result being a running, jumping robot called JumpRoACH that only weighs 60 grams but has an incredible 1.6 meters worth of hops.”
Google Selling Boston Dynamics To Toyota
From Tech Insider:
“Google is in talks with the Toyota Research Institute to sell its robotics division Boston Dynamics, a source familiar with the matter told Tech Insider.
A price for the deal has not yet been disclosed, but this person says the “ink is nearly dry.”
Tensions between Google and Boston Dynamics have been brewing since 2014, but a video released by Boston Dynamics in February of its humanoid robot, Atlas, was the tipping point for the separation, according to a Bloomberg article written in March. At the time, Bloomberg reported that Amazon and the Toyota Research Institute were possible acquirers of Boston Dynamics.”
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