Category Archives: Robotics

NORFOLK, Va., June 30, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SVT Robotics, whose software accelerates and simplifies the integration and deployment of robotics, today announced that Griffin Chronis has joined the executive team as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Chronis comes to SVT from Salesforce after spending the previous decade co-founding BeyondCore, an artificial intelligence company acquired by Salesforce in 2016, integrated with Analytics Cloud, and rebranded as Einstein Discovery.

Griffins experience and leadership in the technology space bring a level of innovative vision that ensures we can continue to scale our product in ways most beneficial to our customers and partners in this ever-evolving marketplace, said A.K. Schultz, CEO of SVT Robotics. Were thrilled to have him leading our software and product engineering teams here at SVT.

I am excited and honored to join A.K. and the SVT Robotics team as Chief Technology Officer, said Chronis. These are amazing people, and I love the enthusiasm of the culture here. SVT has embarked on a great journey with its unique SOFTBOT Platform, and I look forward to further advancing the immense potential of this ground-breaking technology.

Prior to his time with Salesforce, Chronis participated in video game, enterprise search, and social networking companies. He joins SVT Robotics as the company continues to receive a surge of interest and recognition for their SOFTBOT Platform. This past year, they closed a $25 million Series A funding round led by Tiger Global, with participation from Prologis Ventures. In addition to being named one of Fast Companys 2022 Worlds Most Innovative Companies, SVT was named a 2022 MHI Innovation Award finalist, and a 2021 Gartner Cool Vendor.

Chronis lives in San Francisco with his wife, Elizabeth, and sons, Apollo, and Ares.

About SVT RoboticsSVT Robotics is an enterprise software company thats revolutionizing robot deployments in the warehousing and manufacturing industries. SVT's SOFTBOT Platform enables companies to integrate any robot, automation, IoT device, or human productivity tool for any task in just days or weeks. Learn more and join the revolution at svtrobotics.com. Follow us on Twitter,Facebook, andLinkedIn.

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SVT Robotics Names Griffin Chronis as Chief Technology Officer to Drive Innovation in Next Stage of Growth - GlobeNewswire

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Brady Watkins, SoftBank Robotics Americas new President. | Source: SoftBank Robotics America

SoftBank Robotics America (SBRA) announced it appointed Brady Watkins as president of the company. Watkins previously served as the companys senior vice president and general manager.

Were grateful for Bradys demonstrated leadership in our organization, as well as his ability to unite stakeholders in the robotics industry, Kent Yoshida, Chief Business Officer at SoftBank Robotics Group (SBRG), said. As ongoing labor shortages throughout the globe have created increased demand for autonomous solutions, we see great potential for growth in the U.S. market and look forward to working with Brady and the SBRA team to achieve these goals.

During his time as senior vice president and general manager, Watkins helped to scale and commercialize Whiz, a collaborative robot vacuum. His work in North America helped drive the company towards putting 20,000 units in market globally.

Watkins also aided in entering SBRA into a strategic development and equity partnership with Autonomous Solutions Inc, bringing SBRA into the outdoor automation market. The partnership aims to accelerate the development and deployment of landscaping care and logistics solutions.

As President of SBRA, Watkins will focus on products and services for commercial management in the real estate, transportations and retail sectors, among others. Watkins will continue to push the company into new product lines, while also working in development, engineering, marketing and customer success.

Before his time at SBRA, Watkins was the vice president of digital client solutions at InnerWorkings. Watkins also spent over 10 years working at Ubisoft, where he held a number of positions including brand manager and director of sales planning and integration.

SBRA is the North American arm of SoftBank Robotics. SoftBank Robotics has offices in Tokyo, San Francisco, Boston, London, Paris, Hamberg, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai and Hong Kong, and aims to become a worldwide leader in robotics solutions.

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Brady Watkins appointed as President of SoftBank Robotics America - Robot Report

Over the past four months, the Russia military analysis community reevaluated earlier assumptions about Moscows militarys capabilities, starting from the onset of the Ukraine invasion, through todays grinding tactics and concepts that show a more competent Russian force eventually emerging against Ukrainian defenders. This reevaluation likewise involved the assessment of unmanned and autonomous capabilities that Russia touted before the war as game-changing technology. At this point in the conflict, the videos and images from the Ukrainian front confirm that enabling technology like unmanned aerial vehicles are in fact a significant part of how Russia fights today in Ukraine, underscoring that this capability is pivotal to the Russian militarys ongoing war.

Prior to this conflict, a lot of useful analysis and commentary was available for review about Russias development of unmanned aerial, ground, and maritime systems as near-future enablers of what was supposed to be a modernized Russian military preparing for the next war. A lot of that information was derived from Russian-language public sources, and judged accordingly, given the brevity of descriptions or occasional lack of technical specifications, beyond initial and sometimes hyperbolic announcements about the potential use and utility of these platforms. In the opening weeks and even two months into its invasion of Ukraine, the Russian militarys autonomous and unmanned performance was rather weak or even altogether lacking, leading to early conclusions that perhaps this capability was over-emphasized when compared to other systems and weapons. However, as the months went on, concepts and tactics took shape that were more in line with the Russian militarys pre-war preparation and training that involved unmanned aerial vehicles in particular as key enablers of ground forces. Russias current performance in the conflict which involves heavy use of aerial drones and growing use of unmanned ground systems is underscoring earlier assumptions about the utility of this technology in war. Despite concerns raised in the early weeks of the war about the accuracy of Western analysis of the Russian military, the community still had a good grasp of the Russian militarys commitment to robotics and autonomy. Future analysis should incorporate what we see in the current war, with the pre-February 2022 analysis in the background.

As the relevance of this technology continues to grow in this conflict, it is important to note a few facts about Russias military autonomy and AI-enabling research and development. Information from the Russian media and in military journals enabled the analytical communitys understanding of overall research and development trends across the Russian military. Announcements of systems built and tested piecemeal, or of technology allegedly in development, pointed to the evolution of Russian military thought similar to that of other high-tech militaries like those of the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, or China. This general direction suggests a slow but eventual, and seemingly unavoidable, evolution from military technology with the human fighter as the key performance metric toward one in which unmanned and autonomous systems will take on greater responsibilities. These autonomous systems continue evolving, after significant testing and evaluation, into combat partners, and eventually into the first line of attack. To analysts outside Russia, that seemed to be the general direction in which the Russian military was heading.

While many of these Russian projects are still ongoing, and probably will be in the testing stages for quite a while, studying them nonetheless yielded some insights into how Russia is trying to conceptualize future ground warfare, maritime strikes, or aerial combat to counter and dominate adversaries. This information was on a parallel path to the U.S. Department of Defenses thinking through todays and future battlefield problems that can be solved by military robotics, a catch-all phrase used by both the Russian military establishment and its journalist community. Of the dozens of projects funded by the Russian Ministry of Defense, few eventually matured to the point of serious testing and evaluation. But even a few such concepts such as the Marker unmanned ground vehicle, Okhotnik unmanned aerial combat vehicle, and Vityaz deep-diving autonomous underwater vehicle provided an overview of what could potentially come down the line, assuming many factors like economics, manufacturing, and political support lined up. These factors included not just the funding and technical acumen of the enterprises and manufacturers, but the users capable evaluation of how such technology would enable operations in a difficult and unpredictable combat environment.

This leads to the second assessment about the presence of this technology at the tactical level in Ukraine. The Russian military is flying numerous drone missions practically around the clock, losing many drones to Ukraines capable air defenses. With the Ukrainian military proudly showing off many downed Russian aerial drone models on social media, questions arose about the tactics that eventually lead to so many losses, and the longevity of the Russian drone fleet in this war. In fact, many of these failures probably originate in Russian drone training and testing. What was and still is notably absent in the Russian defense medias analysis and announcements of drills with unmanned aerial vehicles is the ability of red teams to really test the Russian forces capabilities and ad-hoc battlefield flexibility. In the United States, such adversary or opposing force teams exist across all services to constantly test existing tactics and technologies, and their work is publicly debated, especially when they score training and exercise successes against blue forces.

On the other hand, the Russian media description of exercises involving emerging technology like drones often described a one-sided combat scenario, with the blue force successfully using drones against saboteurs or enemies to eliminate the adversary formations. In these exercises, the drones would always locate the opponents and would transmit their coordinates for subsequent ground and aerial strikes. Rarely did the Russian military team simulating the adversary employ counter-measures against the main force, and the pre-determined drill outcome placed the drone on the winning and unchallenged side. In fact, even the description of the opposing forces used often in many of these exercises saboteurs instead of enemy special forces or regular troops willing to disrupt Russian operations evoked formations and units less professional or less equipped for the task. There were several large-scale Russian military drills like Zapad-2021 that involved sophisticated counter-drone systems and tactics, but those likely featured pre-scripted scenarios that announced different vehicle types like Orlan-10, Forpost, and Orion drones completing their missions seemingly without significant obstacles to their operation.

Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military establishment broadly used the phrase lessons learned from Syria to denote the general direction for force training. The Russian military may have underestimated the strength of Ukrainian air defenses and trained its aerial drone units against what they thought were forces similar to those encountered in Syria. The numerous Russian losses over Ukraine early on may have created the impression that the Russian military overestimated the success of its drone units and technologies. However, as the war continues, Russian military operations involving drones as key elements of reconnaissance-strike contours point to the eventual emergence of core tactics that were tested by Russian ground, intel, airborne, and marine forces. Today, Russian soldiers launching their Orlan-10s to directly strike or identify Ukrainian forces, or using a commercial DJI model just to get additional intelligence and reconnaissance data around the corner, indicates the continued presence of such technologies that have become almost organic to practically any military formation in this war.

The Russian drones remain one of the most visible high-tech aspects of this war, whether military-grade Orlan-10 or Eleron-3, or the numerous civilian DJI models. These unmanned vehicles are key to pivotal tasks like identifying targets, serving as artillery spotters, or as just another pair of eyes to monitor the ground conditions. Their loss is built into their missions they are supposed to be expendable and relatively inexpensive when compared to launching manned missions to do the same job. Pre-war Russian media descriptions and articles on drone development and future capabilities supported the overall Ministry of Defense concept of technology assisting humans on dangerous missions, even if augmented by hyperbolic statements from the Russian defense industry about mass acquisition of these and other advanced systems in the very near future.

The same can be said of the numerous Russian unmanned ground vehicle projects systems that are eventually supposed to provide logistical, intelligence, de-mining, fire, and combat support to Russias massive ground forces. Most of these projects have not yet graduated past the development and testing stages. The slow but steady roll-out of such systems like Uran-6 and Kobra unmanned ground vehicles in Ukraine for de-mining and intelligence-gathering underscores Russian willingness to continually test such technology in its past, current, and future wars.

Evaluating Russias pre-war maritime autonomous systems was more difficult, given that less information existed in the first place beyond the official announcements of programs launched and potentially tested. Overall, the available data still made it possible to paint a larger picture of what may come next if the stars align for the Russian defense industry and the Ministry of Defense.

This alignment may be in question given the current state of Russian military performance in the war, the ongoing transformation and restructuring of the Russian economy due to sanctions, the brain drain that seems to be affecting the Russian defense industry, and the hints that Russia may be running out of key high-tech equipment and components. None of this is stopping the Russian Ministry of Defense from placing an emphasis on military autonomy and robotics as key investments in future combat capabilities. It remains to be seen whether these announcements are propelled by inertia from pre-February 2022 planning and resource allocation, or decisions made in light of the information analyzed from the war. If anything, the ongoing combat in Ukraine and the heavy toll on soldiers reinforces proposals by the Russian military establishment for substituting uncrewed aerial, ground, and maritime systems in place of the aircraft, helicopters, tanks, armored vehicles, and naval vessels that are being lost in significant numbers by both sides. It is unlikely that the Russian military would significantly alter its current research and development ecosystem for such emerging technology, considering how much other leading and competing powers are investing in military autonomy and robotics.

Whatever lessons Russian military learns from this war and is willing to make public would still create space for the utility of such robotic systems, given the overall global trends and discussions of these systems for combat. This may seem like a tall order at this point, given the mounting numbers of Russian soldiers killed and the prevalence of crewed systems taking heavy punishment from the Ukrainian military, all pointing to the centrality of human fighters to Russian military thinking. The initial surprise at the relatively poor Russian military campaign was also juxtaposed against the Ukrainian militarys successful fielding of different types of aerial drones to blunt, counter, and even defeat Russian advances. With this technology now firmly in focus by all who follow this war, the Russian military will continue analyzing its near- and long-term impact on force development and combat operations, as well as the need to operate such systems in combined arms formations. As researchers and analysts of the Russian military in general, it is our task to record and to understand these deliberations, while keeping an objective eye on what the Russian military says, does, and writes about the eventual emergence of new technologies in future wars.

Samuel Bendett is an adviser with CNA Russia Studies Program and an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security.

Image: Russian Ministry of Defence

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To Robot or Not to Robot? Past Analysis of Russian Military Robotics and Today's War in Ukraine - War on the Rocks

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has awarded $600,000 of additional funding towards a concept that would see swarms of diminutive swimming robots sent to explore oceans on moons or planets throughout the solar system.

Such a system of distributed tiny robots could extend the reach of a mission sent to study oceans beneath the icy surfaces of some of our solar system's moons such as Saturn's Enceladus or Jupiter's Europa. The concept, called "Sensing With Independent Micro-Swimmers," or SWIM, is the brainchild of Ethan Schaler, a robotics mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The latest funding award was announced in a Jet Propulsion Laboratory news release.

"My idea is, where can we take miniaturized robotics and apply them in interesting new ways for exploring our solar system?" Schaler said in the statement. "With a swarm of small swimming robots, we are able to explore a much larger volume of ocean water and improve our measurements by having multiple robots collecting data in the same area."

While sending robotic explorers to other planets and moons is not a new idea, the SWIM concept would use robots that are much smaller than those typically proposed. The SWIM robots would measure just five inches (12 centimeters) in length and take up only around 3 to 5 cubic inches (60 to 75 cubic centimeters) in volume. Each robot would contain its own onboard computer, propulsion system, an ultrasound communication system, and various sensors to measure temperature, acidity, pressure, or other variables. The new funding JPL awarded the SWIM concept will help work towards including chemical sensors that might be able to detect biomarkers in the seas around them.

Schaler envisions dozens of these fitting inside a single robotic "cryobot" that could penetrate a moon's or planet's ice caps in order to reach any seas below. Deploying dozens of the tiny robots could greatly expand the geographical reach of a mission to Europa or Enceladus or any other body on which seas or oceans are found.

Related: Europa: Facts About Jupiter's Icy Moon and Its Ocean

"What if, after all those years it took to get into an ocean, you come through the ice shell in the wrong place? What if there's signs of life over there but not where you entered the ocean?" added SWIM team scientist Samuel Howell of JPL. "By bringing these swarms of robots with us, we'd be able to look 'over there' to explore much more of our environment than a single cryobot would allow."

In addition, a distributed swarm of sensor-laden robots would be able to overlap their measurements, thus reducing potential errors. More data points also means greater ability to detect gradients or variances in the swimmers' environment.

The micro-swimmers concept remains hypothetical and is not currently being eyed for any specific NASA mission. However, NASA is currently working towards a 2024 launch for its Europa Clipper mission which will circle Europa dozens of times to study the moon. It's possible the data obtained from Europa Clipper could inform a future mission that includes tiny SWIM robots to finally take a dive into the subsurface oceans under the moon's icy surface.

Email Brett at BTingley@Space.com or follow Brett on Twitter at @bretttingley. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.

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Swarms of tiny robots may one day explore oceans on other worlds - Space.com

How efficient your workforce is and how quick they learn and adapt, makes them resilient to face the impact of change

By Kiran N. Kumar

In a peer-reviewed publication, a team from the University of Pittsburgh found that the German workers were not taking to substance abuse as theirAmerican counterparts after robots replaced them in the work environment.

While automation truly enhances productivity and reduces accidents, it was found more harmful to the mental health of human co-workers, suggests the study published last week in Labor Economics from Pitt economist Osea Giuntella.

Read: Robots to wipe out more than half of jobs within next 30 years (June 6, 2016)

Rania Giuntella, co-author of the study from Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences says, On one hand, robots could take some of the most strenuous, physically intensive, and risky tasks.

On the other hand, the competition with robots may increase the pressure on workers who may lose their jobs or be forced to retrain. Of course, labor market institutions may play an important role, particularly in a transition phase.

Crucial transition phase

These findings reiterate the need for a transition process before robots or Artificial Intelligence (AI) take over most of the jobs, making humans redundant and resilient in work places.

In the US, more people working alongside robots had resulted in a significant increase of 37.8 cases per 100,000 people in drug or alcohol related deaths, besides a slight increase in suicide rate and mental health issues.

When researchers investigated the effects of robotics on workers in Germany, they did not find significant mental-health change due to robotics.

So, the imminent question follows: Why does American automation at work seem to result in much more negative outcomes than in Germany?

Robot exposure did not cause disruptive job losses as Germany has a much higher employment protection legislation, Giuntella explains.

Read: Good bots vs bad bots: In elections, who decides what? (June 22, 2022)

Our evidence finds that, in both contexts, robots have a positive impact on the physical health of workers by reducing injuries and work-related disabilities.

However, our findings suggest that, in contexts where workers were less protected, competition with robots was associated with a rise in mental health problems.

Giuntella, who has studied the effects of robotics on economic stature and marital lifestyle, however, offers no quick-fix solution.

There has been an intense debate on the effects of robotics and automation on labor market outcomes, but we still know little about how these structural economic changes are reshaping key life-course choices, he said.

Choice after job loss

Last year, McKinsey Global Institute predicted that 45 million Americans or one-quarter of the workforce would lose their jobs to automation by 2030, accentuated by Covid-19 pandemic and the possibility of recession.

But optimists argue that automation being constant, loss of jobs remain a temporary phase since new inventions create new markets and new jobs. The opponents point out that the robot job apocalypse scenario due to AI is advancing so quickly that replacement jobs wont keep pace.

Another McKinsey report estimates that the loss of jobs could be 27%, but after diversifying the workforce into new roles, the effective job losses could only be 9%. Still it is high enough not to be discarded easily.

Here, the solution shown should not be isolated to mental impact on the labor force but in German resilience that could be gleaned from the study.

The German worker could adapt to change quickly, but his American counterpart did not. Efficiency of Germans being what it is, American workers are seeking a protective shield instead, in the form of a government bailout or income protection.

Read: Robots are driving U.S. workers towards substance abuse, mental illness (June 30, 2022)

No wonder, a solution offered by Andrew Yang, who was a candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries and the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary, becomes contextual here. He proposed that lack of jobs should entail all Americans to a $1,000 monthly government income.

Is it a solution? In a scenario of 100-meter race, an Olympic runner takes 6 to 7 seconds but an ordinary runner takes more than 20 seconds.

Efficiency matters! How efficient your workforce is and how quick they learn and adapt, makes them resilient to face the impact of change, whether from robots or AI. Unless this is addressed, a holistic solution remains far-fetched.

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Why are robots driving US workers to substance abuse, not... - The American Bazaar

June 29, 2022 | Funding for single-cell sequencing, small molecule drug discovery, neurological biomarkers, and more.

$245M: Debut Fund for Life Sciences Technology

Biospring Partners, a female-founded and led growth equity firm exclusively focused on B2B life sciences technology companies, announced the closing of its debut fund with north of $245 million in capital commitments from pension plans, fund of funds, endowments, foundations, and family offices. Biosprings investments are working to push the healthcare industry forward by enabling new forms of biopharma manufacturing, diagnostic testing, and software applications that are fundamentally changing how diseases are researched, diagnosed, and treated.

$60M: Series D Funding for Drug Discovery Robotics

Insilico Medicine, a clinical-stage end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, has completed a $60 million Series D financing and launched an AI-powered drug discovery robotics laboratory. Capital raised in the round will further bolster Insilicos financial position and fuel the growth of its advancing pipeline, including its lead program, which is currently in a Phase I study, and the continued development of its Pharma.AI platform. In addition, the proceeds will fund ongoing global expansion and planned strategic initiatives, including a fully robotic biological data factory to complement Insilicos vast curated data assets.

$52M: Funding Round for Precision Immunology Pipeline

Endpoint Health, a therapeutics company dedicated to addressing unmet needs in immune-mediated acute and chronic diseases, announced the close of $52 million in equity and debt financing. Proceeds from the funding round will extend the companys precision-first platform and expand its therapeutic pipeline to include programs for chronic immune-mediated diseases. In addition, proceeds will be used to advance Antithrombin III, the companys first precision therapy, to a Phase II clinical trial for the treatment of sepsis. Sepsis is responsible for one in every five deaths worldwide, yet there are few FDA-approved therapies to treat the condition.

$43M: Series F Funding for Cancer Profiling

Epic Sciences, a privately held diagnostics company, has completed a $43 million first close of its Series F financing. The company will use the capital from this additional round of private investment to advance its multi-omic platform and expand operations in areas such as single-cell sequencing and data analytics infrastructure. DefineMBC, Epic's novel blood-based test for comprehensively characterizing metastatic breast cancer, has been reporting patient results since April 2022. The test's multi-analyte methods have demonstrated impressive sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and precision.

$40M: Series A Funding for Clinical Sequencing

Watchmaker Genomics, a life sciences company specializing in developing high-stringency applications focused on reading, writing, and editing DNA and RNA, announced that it had secured $40 million in an oversubscribed Series A, bringing total funding to date to $53.5 million. With this Series A round of financing, Watchmaker plans to accelerate investment in its protein engineering platform to deliver a suite of new products that address the demands of clinical sequencing and support emerging applications in single-cell analysis, epigenetics, and cell-free DNA. In addition, the company will expand commercial channels and manufacturing capacity, making these product solutions more broadly accessible to the life science and genomics communities.

$37M: Series C Funding for AI-Enabled Precision Oncology

Proscia, a digital and computational pathology solutions company, has raised $37 million to advance how we understand and treat diseases like cancer. This investment brings Proscia's total funding to $72 million. The financing will enable Proscia to accelerate the adoption of computational pathology, strengthening its market and product leadership. It will also use the capital infusion to scale its commercial operation, broaden its portfolio of computational solutions, build on its DermAI and AI melanoma detection success, and extend digital pathology's first suite of process automation solutions beyond Automated QC.

$36.5M: Venture Fund for Genomics Startups

Illumina and LifeArc, a UK independent medical research charity, joined select U.S. and European investors in participating in Time Boost Capitals 30 million genomics venture fund. Time Boost Capital will provide pound-for-pound match funding to every Illumina Accelerator Cambridge graduate securing between 500,000 and 4 million in new capital from qualified investors within 18 months of acceptance. Since opening in July 2020, Illumina Accelerator Cambridge has launched 13 startups focused on harnessing genomics applications to improve human health, including novel therapeutics, diagnostics, synthetic biology, research tools, and agriculture.

$36M: Award for AI-Powered Viral Study Program

A $36 million award from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a part of the Department of Defense, will enable the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) to establish a research and development program to study how a virus will invade and infect humans. The program, Pathogenesis and Toxicity Forecasting Using Multi-Organoid Systems, or PATMOS, uses WFIRMs Body-on-a-Chip platform to investigate the biochemical changes in viral infections. The platform consists of an advanced 3D model of human tissues or organs. The PATMOS program will infect the 3D organs, or organoids, with different viruses and analyze what happens throughout an infection.

$30M: Series A Funding for Small Molecule Drug Discovery

Anagenex, a drug discovery company pairing large-scale data generation with machine learning to discover the next generation of small molecule medicines, announced that it closed a $30 million Series A financing round. Anagenex will use the funds to expand its novel data-generating platform and build a robust pipeline of programs addressing challenging unmet medical needs. The Anagenex platform iteratively assesses up to billions of compounds in parallel to generate extraordinarily high-quality data. Armed with these enormous datasets and highly accurate models, Anagenex has the tools to address some of the most challenging targets in drug discovery.

$27M: Series B Funding for Heart Disease Diagnostics

Elucid announced closing a $27 Million Series B financing round. The Elucid platform is the only FDA-Cleared and CE-Marked software to quantify plaque morphology validated against tissue specimens objectively. Specifically, the exquisite algorithms developed through machine learning characterize tissue types in the artery wall known to cause heart attacks. The capability to discern complex plaque biology at the cellular and molecular level is powering new applications to derive fractional flow reserve, risk of heart attack/stroke, and expression prediction. This comprehensive approach enables physicians to diagnose the direct cause of chest pain and determine if patients have early-stage heart disease, which alternative methods cannot see.

$25M: Series A Funding for Neurological Diseases

NeuraLight, a company developing objective and sensitive biomarkers for neurological disorders, announced $25 million in Series A funding. The round will support the company as it seeks to improve the design of neurological clinical trials, increase the probability of success for novel neurological therapeutics, and usher in a new era of precision medicine for neurology. NeuraLight leverages proprietary computer vision and deep learning algorithms to extract all relevant oculometric markers from facial videos captured with a standard webcam or smartphone. The companys technology applies to various neurological disorders, initially focused on Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and ALS.

$21M: Series A Funding for Early Detection Cancer Test

Elypta, a Swedish diagnostics company aiming to commercialize the first metabolism-based liquid biopsy for early detection of any cancer, announced the raise of $21 million in a Series A financing round led by Bonnier Ventures. The company will use the capital to develop and validate blood and urine tests for Multi-Cancer Early Detection (MCED) in adults with no cancer symptoms and to detect recurrence in kidney cancer patients. The tests are based on the detailed profiling of human glycosaminoglycansalso known as the GAGomeas biomarkers of cancer metabolism. Detecting stage I cancer is the key challenge here, and whereas other MCED tests based on cell-free DNA struggle to find cancer at this early stage, metabolism-based biomarkers could make a difference.

$19M: Series A Funding for Gastrointestinal Diagnostics

Gemelli Biotech, a company focused on improving health by providing precision diagnostics for gastrointestinal diseases, announced the completion of a $19 million Series A financing. Gemelli will use the capital to accelerate the commercialization of its trio-smart and ibs-smart precision diagnostic tests, including expanding sales and marketing across the US and the scale-up of laboratory and manufacturing capacity. Gemelli has launched two products: trio-smartthe only clinical breath test that measures levels of hydrogen, methane, and hydrogen sulfide to provide clinicians and patients with a complete picture of gut healthand ibs-smarta patented diagnostic blood test for post-infectious irritable bowel syndrome.

$10M: Funding for Immunotherapy Research

The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy announced a new $10 million commitment to Johns Hopkins University. This investment allows for novel work, advanced immunotherapy research, and lifesaving breakthroughs for cancer patients. The Mark Foundation Centers fundamental research priorities include studying how cancer evades the immune system and spreads. Of the $10 million investment, The Mark Foundation is donating $6 million, and BKI is providing $4 million, helping scientific teams to continue using innovative technologies to determine why certain patients do not respond to immunotherapies.

$9M: Research Grant for Lung Cancer Technology

The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania received a five-year, $9 million research grant from the National Cancer Institute for imaging technology that illuminates lung tumor tissue, helping clinicians detect and remove it. This technology, intraoperative molecular imaging (IMI), is based on fluorescent beacon molecules that target and bind themselves to tumor cells, essentially making them glow, allowing doctors to distinguish cancer from healthy tissue easily. Penn researchers with the Center for Precision Surgery in the Abramson Cancer Center and colleagues at other institutions will use the research grant to study and improve IMI technology for non-small-cell lung cancers.

$2.9M: Funding for Tumor Antibody Drug Conjugates

Spirea Limited, a Cambridge company created to advance a new generation of antibody drug conjugate (ADC) therapeutics, announced that it secured funding of 2.4 million with investments from high-profile UK and US investors. Spirea will use the funds to initiate its pipeline of superior and differentiated ADCs to treat solid tumors. Spireas technology allows for a higher drug-to-antibody ratio, which means more drugs reach the cancer cell for the development of stable and tailored ADCs incorporating a variety of drug payloads at varying potency levels and different modes of action. This method will result in significantly better efficacy and safety profiles for cancer therapeutics.

Undisclosed Funding for Drug Discovery Technology

Optibrium, a drug discovery software developer, announced it had secured further investment from existing investors Kester Capitala UK mid-market private equity firmto develop and commercialize its computer-aided drug discovery technologies, make future appointments to the senior leadership team, and continue expansion across Europe and the United States. Optibriums products enable preclinical drug discovery, focusing on hit to lead and lead optimization phases extracting maximum value from pharmaceutical data to target high-quality compounds and accelerate discovery cycles confidently.

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Follow the Money: Drug Discovery Robotics Lab, Clinical Sequencing Platform, More - Bio-IT World

This photo provided by Hyundai Robotics Co. shows the companys disinfection robot.

SEOUL, July 1 (Korea Bizwire) Hyundai Robotics Co., the largest industrial robot manufacturer in South Korea, said Thursday it will release an innovative disinfection robot enabling face-to-face disinfection.

The newly-developed robot uses plasma sterilization, a method that has been used for the sterilization of surgical instruments at hospitals, to sterilize the air, while carrying out floor sterilization using ultraviolet-C (UV-C) LEDs installed on its underside that enable face-to-face disinfection.

The existing disinfection robots in the market typically spray disinfectants that are harmful to humans, while being limited only to non-face-to-face disinfection since UV-C lamps causing skin diseases are installed on the front.

Hyundai Robotics disinfection robot removes various harmful bacteria through its internal plasma sterilization and emits purified air from a vent at the top.

Mounted with eight different types of sensors, it can sense ultra-fine dust and organic chemical compounds in the air and intake and purify them through three-tiered filters.

The robot can disinfect an area of 152 square meters without moving, and can also operate in a self-driving mode. Accordingly, it can carry out disinfection work in lobbies and hallways of buildings where it is hard to install air purifiers and sterilizers.

Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)

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Hyundai Robotics Rolls Out Face-to-Face Disinfection Robot - The Korea Bizwire

The Delhi Board of School Education (DBSE) has roped in experts from IIT Delhi to design the robotics and automation curriculum for the city government's Schools of Specialised Excellence (SoSE), according to officials.

Through this curriculum, students will be trained in different aspects of robotics and automation which will enable them to pursue higher education and diverse careers pathways in the field, they said. "It is important that schools now start offering courses beyond the regular subjects.

The future will appreciate individuals with adept skill set in areas of new generation technologies like robotics, automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence, which is going to be the norm of functioning for every industry in the near future," Himanshu Gupta, Education Director, said. "With this in mind, the SoSE has put IIT Delhi's Technology Innovation Hub and I-Hub Foundation for Cobotics (IHFC) in charge of designing the syllabus, which will be more progressive and industry-relevant in terms of robotics and automation including but not limited to mechanics, electronics, robotics programming, IoT etc.

The whole idea is to curate teaching material and content for ease of learning," he said. Gupta explained that the IHFC will collaborate with industry partners and players to create an industry-relevant curriculum that will render SoSE students employable in aspirational job roles after four years of specialised study in the domain of robotics and automation.

IHFC will also extend support by lending the expertise of industry partners, academia partners and the alumni in designing experiential learning opportunities for students such as internship, apprenticeship, guest lectures, masterclasses, visits and projects, which will contribute to an immersive and hands-on learning.

Go here to read the rest:

IIT Delhi plans for robotics and automation - The Hans India

Mentions of robotics within the filings of companies in the automotive industry fell 32% between the final quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.

In total, the frequency of sentences related to robotics between April 2021 and March 2022 was 60% higher than in 2016 when GlobalData, from whom our data for this article is taken, first began to track the key issues referred to in company filings.

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When companies in the automotive industry publish annual and quarterly reports, ESG reports and other filings, GlobalData analyses the text and identifies individual sentences that relate to disruptive forces facing companies in the coming years. Robotics is one of these topics companies that excel and invest in these areas are thought to be better prepared for the future business landscape and better equipped to survive unforeseen challenges.

To assess whether robotics is featuring more in the summaries and strategies of companies in the automotive industry, two measures were calculated. Firstly, we looked at the percentage of companies which have mentioned robotics at least once in filings during the past twelve months this was 51% compared to 33% in 2016. Secondly, we calculated the percentage of total analysed sentences that referred to robotics.

Of the 10 biggest employers in the automotive industry, Denso was the company which referred to robotics the most between April 2021 and March 2022. GlobalData identified 10 robotics-related sentences in the Japan-based companys filings 0.3% of all sentences. Mercedes-Benz mentioned robotics the second most the issue was referred to in 0.13% of sentences in the companys filings. Other top employers with high robotics mentions included Stellantis, Magna and BYD.

Across all companies in the automotive industry the filing published in the first quarter of 2022 which exhibited the greatest focus on robotics came from Schaeffler. Of the documents 2,919 sentences, 13 (0.4%) referred to robotics.

This analysis provides an approximate indication of which companies are focusing on robotics and how important the issue is considered within the automotive industry, but it also has limitations and should be interpreted carefully. For example, a company mentioning robotics more regularly is not necessarily proof that they are utilising new techniques or prioritising the issue, nor does it indicate whether the companys ventures into robotics have been successes or failures.

In the last quarter, companies in the automotive industry based in Asia were most likely to mention robotics with 0.13% of sentences in company filings referring to the issue. In contrast, companies with their headquarters in the United States mentioned robotics in just 0.04% of sentences.

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Filings buzz in the automotive industry: 32% decrease in robotics mentions in Q1 of 2022 - just-auto.com

NEW YORK, June 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The global Crop Harvesting Robots Marketsize is expected to grow by USD 1455.57billion at a CAGR of 28.36% as per Technavio. Thereport extensively coverscrop harvesting robots marketsegmentation by product (fruit and vegetable harvesting robots and grain harvesting robots) and geography (North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and MEA).

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The market is driven by the increasing focus on farm mechanization. In addition, the growing popularity of solar-powered crop harvesting robots is anticipated to boost the growth of the crop harvesting robots market.

Machines are steadily replacing people in agriculture in various countries and have significantly reshaped the agricultural landscape. The productivity of the farm has a direct relationship with the efficient utilization of farm implements. Crop harvesting robots have been gaining popularity as an effective solution for harvesting across farms, greenhouses, and nurseries. They have widely been used as an effective solution for labor shortage problems during the harvesting season in various countries.

Some of the crop harvesting robots commonly used are lettuce harvesters, cucumber harvesters, wheat harvesters, barley harvesters, and sweet pepper harvesters. Thus, the increasing focus on farm mechanization will drive the demand for crop harvesting, thereby driving market growth.

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Crop Harvesting Robots Market Scope

Report Coverage

Details

Page number

120

Base year

2020

Forecast period

2021-2025

Growth momentum & CAGR

Accelerate at a CAGR of 28.36%

Market growth 2021-2025

$ 1455.57 billion

Market structure

Fragmented

YoY growth (%)

26.16

Regional analysis

North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and MEA

Performing market contribution

North America at 39%

Key consumer countries

US, Germany, UK, China, and France

Competitive landscape

Leading companies, Competitive strategies, Consumer engagement scope

Key companies profiled

Agrobot, Cerescon BV, Clearpath Robotics Inc., Dogtooth Technologies Ltd., Energid Technologies Corp., FFRobotics, Green Robot Machinery Pvt. Ltd., Harvest Automation, Harvest CROO Robotics, and Torguga Agricultural Technologies Inc.

Market dynamics

Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID 19 impact and recovery analysis and future consumer dynamics, Market condition analysis for forecast period

Customization purview

If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

Table of Contents

1 Executive Summary

2 Market Landscape

3 Market Sizing

4 Five Forces Analysis

5 Market Segmentation by Product

6 Customer landscape

7 Geographic Landscape

8 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

9 Vendor Landscape

10 Vendor Analysis

11 Appendix

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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Website:www.technavio.com/

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SOURCE Technavio

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Global Crop Harvesting Robots Market| Increasing focus on farm mechanization to boost market growth| Evolving Opportunities with Abundant Robotics...