While one American company runs half a million driverless rides a week using cameras, lidar and radar together, the other has logged 14 crashes in about 800,000 miles of robotaxi service with a paid human sitting in the front seat
Image: Primary
Image: Primary Zipline has closed $1.5 billion in fresh funding at a valuation of $21.5 billion, Bloomberg reports. The financing for the drone delivery and logistics startup comes as it expands its commercial partnership with retailer Walmart Inc.
China has told SoftBank it will not allow its $5.4B acquisition of ABB's robotics division, the Financial Times reported, citing sources. China is the division's biggest market.
Researchers at the University of Tartu and the Italian Institute of Technology built a moth-shaped robot that forms a new ultraviolet sensor from chemicals circulating through its plastic body, New Atlas reports.
Researchers added a flexible foot pad to the Hopcopter, a robot that combines quadcopter flight with a spring-loaded hopping leg, reducing performance variation across terrains by 84%, New Atlas reported. The earlier prototype struggled on sand, ice and slopes.
MIT researchers developed a robot memory system that corrects uncertain object descriptions in real time while a mobile robot moves.
Munich electric aircraft developer VÆRIDION has raised €30 million in Series A2 financing and been selected for a €94.5 million European Commission Innovation Fund grant, EU-Startups reports. SHIFT Invest and Invest-NL co-led the equity round.