CHRONICLING THE ROBOT INDUSTRY
SINCE 2011 © ROBOT RABBI
This past week I led a group of 20 American tech investors to Israel in conjunction with the UJA and Israel’s Ministry of Economy and Industry. We witnessed firsthand the innovation that has produced more than $22 billion of investments and acquisitions within the past year. We met with the University that … Read More
Last night, President Barack Obama’s parting words “Be Kind & Be Useful” struck a chord with me and my daughter. This morning, it led me to buy a homeless man gloves and rethink how we adopt technology. I would like to controversially suggest that Asimov’s fictional laws be amended to … Read More
The Financial Times reported earlier this year that one of the largest clothing manufacturers, Hong Kong-based Crystal Group, proclaimed robotics could not compete with the cost and quality of manual labor. Crystal’s Chief Executive, Andrew Lo, emphatically declared, “The handling of soft materials is really hard for robots.” Lo did leave … Read More
As close to a quarter million people descended on a city of six hundred thousand, CES 2018 became the perfect metaphor for the current state of modern society. Unfazed by floods, blackouts, and transportation problems, technology steamrolled ahead. Walking the floor last week at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), the … Read More
Two thousand seventeen certainly has been an emotional year for mankind. While homosapiens continue to yell at Alexa and Siri, the actuality of people’s willingness to pursue virtual relationships over human ones is startling. In a recent documentary by Channel 4 of the United Kingdom, it was revealed that Abyss … Read More
The two biggest societal challenges for the twenty-first century are also the biggest opportunities – automation and climate change. The confluence of these forces of mankind and nature intersect beautifully in the alternative energy market. The epitaph of fossil fuels with its dark cloud burning a hole in the ozone … Read More
Dan Burstein, reporter, novelist and successful venture capitalist, declared Wednesday night at RobotLab‘s winter forum on Autonomous Transportation & SmartCities that within one hundred years the majority of jobs in the USA (and the world) could disappear, transferring the mantle of work from humans to machines. Burstein cautioned the audience … Read More
Like a gymnast nailing a perfect ten, Boston Dynamics’ robot Atlas wowed automation enthusiasts last week. Two years prior, one of the most popular tech videos on YouTube was the humanoid blooper reel of the 2015 DARPA Challenge. In just 24 months machine agility has gone from the Keystone Kops … Read More
Shortly after SoftBank acquired his company last October, Marc Raibert of Boston Dynamics confessed, “I happen to believe that robotics will be bigger than the Internet.” Many sociologists regard the Internet as the single biggest societal invention since the dawn of the printing press in 1440. To fully understand Raibert’s point … Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo of the State of New York declared last month that New York City will join 13 other states in testing self-driving cars: “Autonomous vehicles have the potential to save time and save lives, and we are proud to be working with GM and Cruise on the future of this … Read More
