Robotics & Devices
Robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, IoT and manufacturing.
Animatronics: How Disney Built an Early Example of Robotics in Artificial Intelligence
Disney's Audio-Animatronics started with wind-up birds and became something closer to AI than anyone realized at the time. The through-line from mechanical songbirds to Tiana's Bayou Adventure reveals how physical robotics evolved from pre-programmed loops to intelligent, responsive systems.
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Robotic Tire Changes Are Coming to Canadian Garages This Winter
An in-depth look at PitPro Automation deploying its first automated tire-changing robot at a Kal Tire location in Calgary, Alberta.
Genesis AI Sidestepped the AI General Intelligence Definition — With Robot Hands
Genesis AI raised $105M to build foundational AI for robotics. Their first model, GENE-26.5, ships alongside custom hands — and that hardware bet says more about embodied intelligence than any white paper could.
Why the Best Robotics Play Isn't Building Robots: Destro AI and the Orchestration Gap
Destro AI raised $8M on a thesis most founders would reject: stop trying to build the perfect robot and start orchestrating the messy, human-filled warehouses where those robots actually have to work.
Human-AI Relationships and Their Therapeutic Implications in the Home
Smart speakers and social robots are entering private spaces. Explore emerging questions about trust, emotional connection, and therapeutic implications.
Inside FoundationPose: Weights, Architecture, and Robotics Deployment
A practical walkthrough of FoundationPose's pre-trained weights, the model-based and model-free pipelines behind them, and how NVIDIA's Isaac ROS integration brings zero-shot 6D pose estimation to real robots.
Human-AI Relationships and Their Therapeutic Implications: Navigating the Uncanny Valley
A grounded look at why near-human AI and robots trigger the uncanny valley, and how human-AI relationships and their therapeutic implications point toward trust, emotion, and metacognition as the human edge.
RJ Scaringe at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: EVs, Robots, and Autonomy
Expanded article about RJ Scaringe's vision for AI, autonomy, and robotics at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, including market context and future outlook.
Argo AI winds down as Ford and VW absorb the autonomous vehicle startup
TechCrunch reports Argo AI is shutting down, with its assets absorbed by main backers Ford and VW. The autonomous vehicle startup that burst onto the scene in 2017 with a $1 billion Ford investment is closing operations.
Argo AI's $7.5 Billion Valuation Three Years After Ford Investment
Autonomous vehicle technology startup Argo AI valued at $7.5 billion in July 2020, three years after initial Ford investment
How Kalanick's AI Consumer Hardware Startup Atoms Is Rebuilding the Uber Band
Former Uber executive Gautam Gupta joins Travis Kalanick's robotics and industrial AI startup Atoms as CFO, continuing Kalanick's pattern of reuniting Uber team members at the company. Atoms recently raised $1.7 billion and acquired mining autonomy startup Pronto led by Anthony Levandowski.
AI Governance and the Enterprise AI Leadership Paradox: What Tesla's Earnings Calls Reveal About Executive Attention
Analysis of seven years of Tesla earnings calls shows Elon Musk now spends half his time discussing AI and robots, while talking less than a third about the automotive business that generates 70% of Tesla's revenue — a case study in AI governance failures.