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“Jidoka” is a new one to me. TRI (Toyota Research Institute) CEO Gill Pratt described the concept as “Automation with a Human Touch.” The anglicized version of the notion is “Autonomation” — both are modified forms of “ automation,” in their respective languages. The word was originally applied to Toyota’s Production System, highlighting the need […]
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Ingestible robotics has been a fascinating and growing field for the last several years. We’ve already seen a handful of startups working to commercialize a technology that could allow for internal monitoring, medicine delivery and more, without the need for invasive procedure. This new project from a joint team at Caltech and MIT highlights a […]
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The age-old question in my industry is, “Where are we in a given hype cycle?” For now, crypto news cycle dominance has, thankfully, died now, largely through its own self-destructive tendencies. FTX obviously served as the most prominent recent example of what happens when the tech community believes its own hype. You so badly wish […]
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Here’s an interesting comment from MIT’s Alfonso Parra Rubio, “Treating soft versus hard robotics is a false dichotomy.” For, I suppose, obvious reasons, thinking around technology tends to be a bit…binary. Certainly we’ve traditionally regarded soft robots as being something that exists in direct opposition to their more traditional counterparts. But the organic beings that […]
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This is going to be another one of those “let’s ask ourselves some difficult questions” newsletter introductions, so if you’re in the U.S., I certainly won’t blame you for not giving Actuator your full attention until after the holiday. I generally approach these conversations through the same basic lens: a majority of technologies are neither […]
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Greetings from the bowels of Moscone Center West. As I type this, Kevin Hart just exited the stage and Serena Williams is presiding over a packed house. No exaggeration: I attempted to make my way to grab a seat in the few rows up front allotted to the TechCrunch staff, but I physically couldn’t get […]
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Meltem Demirors hasn’t just been working in crypto for seven years — she’s been shaping its trajectory. Demirors, chief strategy officer at publicly traded European digital asset manager CoinShares, got her start in the space when she went to MIT for business school and became immersed in the world of fintech startups, back when Bitcoin […]
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In case you missed it, robots took over TechCrunch on Thursday, July 21. We played host to the robotic industry’s leading startups, researchers and academics at TC Sessions: Robotics. The event was a blockbuster success, and we hope you enjoyed the show. All the features, panels, interviews and podcasts are embedded below. TechCrunch Editor Brian […]
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A lot of promising companies come out of work by researchers at universities, or even grad students who have struck on some new innovation. But the transition from tech-focused research group to product-focused startup isn’t easy to make; fortunately three experts in the matter joined us at TC Sessions: Robotics to discuss a few ways […]
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A few years ago, I got in the habit of asking researchers the titular question: Are universities doing enough to foster robotics startups? To a one, the answer was invariably, “no.” It was a massive blindspot for some of the world’s leading research institutes, both in commercializing their own work and giving their best and […]
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