Robotics

A company that’s bringing gourmet pizza to a vending machine near you is adding a new high tech quirk to its quick-serve process. Piestro, which has developed an automated artisan pizza concept, is partnering with PopID, which develops facial recognition payment technology, to offer pizza you pay for with your pretty mug.As I wrote last year when Piestro launched its robotically prepared pizza concept, vending machine pizza isn’t such a far fetched concept in the age of fresh-tossed salad from a robot named Sally and a really good pull of espresso from one of Cafe X’s robotic baristas. Automation in food preparation was gaining steam even before COVID-19, although there were some telltale disappointments. Zume, an automated end-to-end pizza restaurant and delivery service that primarily used robots instead of humans, once had a $4 billion valuation but shut down its robot-powered pizza business, laid off more than half its staff, and is shifting focus to autonomous packaging.However, Zume’s model was built on delivery, a tricky logistical stack of cards. Automated vending machines, however, are a model that’s been around for more than half-a-century. The innovation Piestro, Sally, and others hope will catch on is equating the concept with high quality food. Japan, international king of automation, has been way out ahead in the gourmet vending machine space, but the concept has been slower to take hold in the West.Convenience may overcome that, and that’s where PopID comes in.”As we navigate our way out of the pandemic, the demand for contactless ordering and payment options is not going away any time soon,” said John Miller, Chairman of Cali Group, a holding company that comprises significant ownership positions in various technology companies developing software products to digitize and automate the brick and mortar world. “PopID is the go-to universal gateway for contactless payment applications and will enable Piestro to offer an innovative user experience that exceeds customer expectations. We are thrilled to enter into a partnership that will get pizza lovers their favorite creation faster – all they need is their face to pay.” The integration will allow for on-site contactless ordering and payment via PopID-compatible Piestro machines, allowing customers to select and utilize PopID’s PopPay solution as a payment method on the same screen they viewed Piestro’s menu and placed their order. Piestro also integrates app ordering and payment using PopID as a payment method on Piestro’s app for placing pre-orders for pickup. Customers will have the option of verifying their identity with PopID to retrieve their order. “Integrating PopID into our system will allow our customers a safe and reliable way to pay for their pizzas while also expediting the overall process from ordering to eating,” said Massimo De Marco, CEO of Piestro. “We want our customers to experience our deliciously crafted pizzas as quickly as possible, without sacrificing the quality of the product or their health and safety. PopID does that, and we are excited to partner with them to give customers the payment experience they deserve.” More

A company spun off from the maker of Vespa scooters wants robots to follow the leader. To that end, it has equipped a famous robot dog, Boston Dynamics’ Spot, with proof-of-concept technology to enable it to follow humans around. Piaggio Fast Forward (PFF), which cut its teeth on a robot designed to follow humans and carry 40 pounds of stuff, envisions the technology as a future keystone of collaborative industrial automation.”Most robotics companies look at the world as a world of obstacles,” said Greg Lynn, PFF’s chief executive officer. “At PFF, we adopted the opposite approach and this philosophy has fueled our research of how humans and robots physically move through space. We design behaviors that understand people and help automate tasks so you don’t have to build complicated hardware. Working with Trimble to boost the process of replacing remote-controlled robots traveling on predetermined paths in mapped environments enable yet another step in the ultimate goal of providing safe and intuitive operations of machines in industrial environments. Dynamic following technology is one step closer to kicking the doors open to further implementation—from power tools to farming equipment to even automated vehicles.”In the newly unveiled proof-of-concept, PFF and a company called Trimble, which works with positioning, modeling, connectivity, and data analytics, deployed a smart following module prototype onto a Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot platform controlled by Trimble’s advanced positioning technology. The idea is to eliminate the operate with the joystick while preserving the robot’s functionality. The team sees follow-the-leader technology, which has been deployed elsewhere in the robotics sphere, including the military and in autonomous trucking, as a useful addition to teleoperation and autonomy as a controls methodology.”The follow-me technology by PFF provides an intuitive user experience and opens the door to collaborative robots that can augment the human workforce,” says Aviad Almagor, division vice president, Trimble’s Emerging Technologies. “Like, a 21st century Sancho Panza, robots with PFFtag, may have the future ability to assist construction professionals in their daily workflow, carry heavy equipment, improve efficiency and enhance workers safety.”Trimble conducted testing using the Spot robot equipped with Trimble laser scanning or Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) sensors and PFFtag technology at one of its customer’s sites in Colorado over the course of two months.  The collaboration could point the way to how robots work with humans in the near future. More

An out of this world collaboration aims to bring farming to the space age. NASA is teaming up with a company called CropX to leverage its satellites in the fight for food security and sustainability.NASA has long had a unique vantage on the world thanks to its constellation of Earth-observing satellites. Satellite imagery, which is invaluable for tracking changes to the earth over time and giving a snapshot of things like crop health and distribution, has helped scientists make important observations about climate and farming practices. Via a program known as NASA Harvest, the space agency has been working to leverage its insights for food security and sustainable agriculture. In that task, the agency is now supported by CropX, a company that specializes in soil analytics for agriculture via its proprietary soil sensor technology and cloud-based Ag analytics that integrate with irrigation systems. Utilizing CropX’s soil data monitoring and NASA’s network of Earth-observing satellites, NASA Harvest believes it can deliver critical insights to governments and farmers around the globe. “Soil health and nutrient management is at the very root of food security and sustainable agriculture concerns – an accurate understanding of what is actually happening underneath the ground is essential,” says Nadav Liebermann, CTO of CropX. “Satellite imagery has long been an integral part of CropX algorithms, and ourpartnership with NASA Harvest will deliver valuable agronomic insights by connecting critical data at different depths underground and from an expansive network of satellites in space. We are looking forward to working with the NASA Harvest team to improve farming decision-making worldwide – in both developed and undeveloped regions.”The collaboration rides a wave of new techniques known collectively as “precision agriculture” or “agricultural intelligence.” We’ve previously covered the efforts of companies like Taranis, which uses computer vision in a novel weed identification system that combines satellite and drone imagery and AI to tell farmers what kinds of weeds are attacking their crops in real time, empowering the farmers to fight back.This technological intervention is important because the stakes are growing. Worldwide, farmers lose about $750B from crop loss each year. About a third of all food grown is lost. For decades the solution has been heavy herbicide and fertilizer use, but there are mounting concerns about the sustainability of current industrial-scale farming practices.That’s where smart analytics, like the type used in the NASA and CropX partnership, come in. So far the partnership has begun with tests in Arizona alfalfa fields. The pilot program will quickly establish the parameters for water usage estimates, yield prediction, soil quality and land usage assessments based on multiple crop growing cycles. 

“We are in a constant race to produce and supply enough food in order to feed a rapidly growing global population, with finite land and natural resources. NASA Harvest is dedicated to collaborating with top innovators to make the best possible use of our agricultural land; CropX unites our space-led vision with on-farm intelligence and results,” says Dr. Inbal Becker-Reshef, program director of NASA Harvest. “We were impressed by the accuracy and reliability with which the CropX soil monitoring platform was able to both pinpoint various soil health and environmental challenges, as well as determine opportunities for water, energy and nutrient conservation. CropX offers the advanced tools and global farm footprint needed to understand and improve soil health and water quality tied to farming ecosystems around the world. Paired with satellite data, this provides the opportunity to scale these insights in support of farmer productivity and more effective use of available resources.” More

On the heels of a laudable epidemic control program powered by its robots, OrionStar, a robotics firm backed by Cheetah Mobile, is turning its sights aggressively to service. Using Qualcomm technology, the company has added 5G to a line of service robots targeting restaurants, cafes, and the home.The debut came at Mobile World Congress (MWC) Shanghai 2021, notable in itself as the first in-person GMSA event since the pandemic began. The robots are the 5G Robotic Coffee Master, the Restaurant Service Robot, and the 5G HomeBot.”OrionStar’s robot products embedded with Qualcomm Technologies’ solutions exemplify how both 5Gand AI can provide immersive experiences for customers through robotics, while also enabling smarterefficiencies for multiple verticals and industries,” said Dev Singh, senior director, business development,and general manager of robotics, drones and intelligent machines at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.”Qualcomm Technologies’ robotics platforms and solutions are leading the way in the creation andenablement of powerful, secure, and intelligent robots, reshaping the way the world thinks about, utilizesand interacts with robotics technologies.”Early in the pandemic, OrionStar, deployed robots in China to help guide preliminary diagnosis and treatment, primary disclosure of medical information, and fixed-point delivery of medical supplies in hospitals. The robots, donated by Cheetah Mobile, have been deployed in Chinese hospitals, including Peking University Shougang Hospital, Beijing Haidian Hospital, Wuhan Vulcan Mountain Hospital, and Zhengzhou’s Xiaotangshan Hospital.Orion Star’s epidemic prevention and control program, powered by robots, aimed to reduce the workload of medical staff and reduce the risk of infection by using robots to undertake a large number of simple but labor-intensive processing tasks such as pre-diagnosis, house inspection, and delivery. Following human instructions, the robots are designed to collect, store, and transmit data, photos, and videos concerning health barometers, including body temperature measurements.The new service robots target a post-pandemic era during which contactless transactions and automation in realms like retail and grocery delivery are the new normal. Consumer reactions to automation seem to have shifted during the pandemic as robots become a useful tool for safe customer interactions.The 5G enabled coffee bot utilizes 3,000 hours of AI learning and 30,000 hours of robotic arm testing and machine vision training. The company says it can make and serve up to 1000 pour-overs per day. The restaurant service robot delivers delivers to four tables on a single trip and up to 600 trays per day, achieving 99.99% accuracy, according to the company. 

There are other robot concepts similar to these, though the story here might be how well OrionStar is capitalizing on the moment. Anyone who’s had the daily specials read to them from behind a plastic face guard can attest to how odd the scenario feels. In that paradigm, a robot doesn’t feel so far afield. OrionStar’s utilization of 5G is also of a moment as China moves swiftly to deploy its network. China has established 718,000 5G base stations, accounting for 70% of the global share, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China. Robotics, including cloud robotics, is one of the sectors poised to benefit from the global 5G rollout.In short order, OrionStar has become one of China’s stars in the automation sector. According to the company, as of March 2021, Cheetah Mobile and OrionStar have deployed more than 16,800 AI-driven service robots, which have served over 200 million people and completed more than 8.2 million voice interactions daily. The robots have been adopted by more than 2,000 organizations and used in over 20 scenarios, including epidemic prevention and control, smart retail, and smart public transportation. More

A software update is coming to an ear near you. Whisper, which develops AI-enabled hearing aids, just announced that they’ve rolled out the first software upgrade to their Whisper Hearing System, AI-powered hearing aids that improve over time.If you don’t need assistive devices for hearing you’d be forgiven for not knowing that the entire category has received a massive tech upgrade in the last few years. Companies like Oticon Opn have developed hearing devices that link up to smart home and can be set to automatically start the coffee maker and turn on lights when put in each morning. Brands like Starkey offer the ability to stream audio from an iPhone directly to the company’s hearing aids.But intelligence and augmentation is the new frontier. As augmented reality crawls out of its hype hole and begins to deliver some interesting use cases, augmented hearing might be the real market story. That’s because there’s a real need at stake (with apologies to AR). Hearing well isn’t just about getting the sound to the brain, but knowing which sounds should be amplified and which de-emphasized, a fantastically complex problem. Brands like Samsung’s Harman have invested heavily in augmented hearing capable of isolating conversations in noisy environments, and technologies like machine learning and Deep Neural Networks, which simulate the brain’s neural connections to learn without programming, are being applied to hearing assistance technologies to help cut through the dynamic, cluttered noise of natural environments.Like Oticon Opn, Whisper is going all in on AI. The company launched in 2017 with a team of artificial intelligence, hearing care, hardware, and software experts coming together to solve the challenge of providing better hearing. The company’s flagship device debuted in fall 2020.The new updates include improvements include better performance in speech and sound separation, audio optimization, noise reduction, and quality processing, as well as improvements to the compression system used by audiologists to tailor the device for patients.  “This upgrade is a major milestone for hearing health,” says Andrew Song, Co-Founder and President of Whisper. “We are excited to deliver these improvements to Whisper users and help change people’s hearing experience. This upgrade would not have been possible without combining the latest work from our artificial intelligence team with valuable feedback from hearing care professionals.”According to the company, the improvements come as a result of Whisper’s processing tens of thousands of hours of audio information collected since launch in October 2020. Notably, the upgrades are free to Whisper customer, who pay on a monthly plan for the device and ongoing care form a local hearing care professional. It’s a model familiar in the mobile and personal computing worlds, and its migration to the world of hearing assistance signals a new chapter of competition and software-driven technology development in hearing aids. More

A company that brings online grocery fulfillment to grocers of all size, including mom & pops, just raised $21m in an extended Series A. It’s an indication of a rapidly transforming retail environment, which has moved en masse to digital faster than expected thanks to COVID-19. 
Stor.ai, based in Israel, has developed a technology suite to support food retailers’ transition to online, integrating fulfilment methods and point of sale and retail catalogues into what the company calls a mobile-first, custom-branded eCommerce experience. Formerly known as Self Point, the company boasts that it can transition a grocer to its ordering and fulfillment ecosystem within days, a massive cost and time savings over custom solutions.
“I am delighted to see stor.ai build on the 250% year-on-year growth we achieved over the past twelve months and begin an exciting new era for the company, in which we are set to expand both our product offering and our customer base,” says Orlee Tal, CEO, Stor.ai. “Our digital transformation platform provides a win-win scenario for customers and grocers alike: shoppers replicate the in-store experience at their favorite stores, while stores can seamlessly integrate a range of digital solutions at a time when facilitating online shopping is integral to their business. Customer-first commerce is the future of this industry.”
The company’s model is largely rooted in bringing about digital transformation and advanced analytics of a kind that’s helped players like Amazon and Walmart gobble market share. Stor.ai is riding a tailwind during COVID-19, which has seen massive upheavals in consumer behavior and spending habits. By some estimates, the projected value of digital grocery sales in 2025 now some 60% higher than pre-pandemic estimates.
Stor.ai’s technology tracks a broader trend of automation and digitization technologies making their way to SMBs in the grocery business. Company’s like Starship and Tortoise are offering automation and delivery solutions — i.e., grocery robots — for grocers of all sizes.
We recently covered Stor.ai’s efforts to enable small grocers to accept SNAP, also known as food stamps. Many food stamp users have been de facto barred from online shopping due to a paucity of options. 
The latest funding round will help the company extend its market reach and expand its product offering.

“Stor.ai has established a reputation as a market leader providing top-of-the range technological solutions, helping retailers realign to customers’ needs during the most challenging time for business in recent history,” says Guy Mani of Meitav Dash’s, which led the extended Series A. “We are proud to support such exciting eCommerce products, as online grocery shopping continues to capture record market shares, with stor.ai ideally placed to build on its current growth and expand throughout 2021 and beyond. Customers’ needs and preferences are constantly evolving, and we trust stor.ai’s experience, market leadership and ability to help shape future trends with flexible and creative solutions that will enhance the entire customer-based experience for any retailer.” More

There’s been a lot of development activity around flying vehicles recently, but the Air Force wants a shortcut to an unmanned electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) concept for urban transport. The secret sauce? Pairing emerging electric vehicle technology with an innovative rotary internal combustion engine to keep batteries charged and extend flight times. 
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a major focus of technology development among transportation firms, with ambitious projects to put test vehicles in the sky over major urban centers in the U.S. and Europe within the next few years. UAM combines state of the art propulsion and battery technologies with advances in robotics, machine vision, and AI. The result could be a fundamental rethinking of how we navigate in and around cities.
The problem is that electric vehicle technology, while offering advantages like noise reduction, have severe power density limitations compared to combustion engines. It’s a classic development conundrum for aeronautical engineers, one that involves weighing imperfect tradeoffs: Gasoline engines are inefficient, diesel engines are big and heavy, and electric power/batteries weigh a lot compared to the energy they produce. These features present significant limitations to range, payload, and efficiency. Nowhere are those limitations more apparent than in UAV, which require close attention be paid to the weight/power tradeoff.
But what about a hybrid approach? 
That’s the strategy the Air Force seems to be landing on with a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract awarded to LiquidPiston, Inc., a developer of an advanced rotary internal combustion engine called the X-Engine. Paired with a generator, the X-Engine can be configured to charge the eVTOL vehicle’s battery and keep it charged during flight, significantly extending the range of an electric propulsion system. Alternatively, it can be configured in parallel with an electric drive, using the engine directly to produce thrust or lift.
The new contract is in support of the Air Force’s Agility Prime program, which seeks to leverage commercial electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) and other transformative vertical flight vehicles for government missions in a way that accelerates the emerging commercial market.
“Our work with the Air Force demonstrates the versatility and utility of our X-Engine across the Department of Defense including our ongoing work with the US Army,” said Alec Shkolnik, CEO and co-founder of LiquidPiston, referencing an Army contract we covered last year. “Today’s solutions for power and energy are held back by a lack of technological innovation … The X-Engine solves these challenges, and with this contract, we look forward to showcasing the value a hybrid-electric configuration can bring to unmanned flight.”

A rotary engine is the ideal platform for just such a hybrid approach. The X-Engine is 10x smaller and lighter than traditional diesel engines and increases efficiency by 30%. It has only two primary moving parts, a shaft and rotor, which limits size and vibration. 
We’ve covered LiquidPiston before, and it’s easy to get lost in the weeds on the technology. For instance, the company emphasizes that its rotary engines are not Wankel engines, which until now has been the only commercialized rotary engine design. Wankel engines employ a roughly triangular rotor that is spun during a combustion cycle and forms a seal with the outer case at each of the three points of the triangular rotor. As the rotor spins, those seals are subjected to forces that cause them to wear. LiquidPiston’s engine, on the other hand, uses an oval rotor that moves within a triangular housing. The required seals are mounted on the stationary housing and are lubricated directly, increasing wear life and durability.
We’ll keep any eye on the Air Force’s efforts as part of our ongoing coverage of Urban Air Mobility. More

A company that makes an innovative robot that may one day challenge Amazon drivers for their urban deliveries, is newly buoyed by a seed round announced this week. Refraction AI, an automation firm founded in 2019 and creator of the REV-1, a low-cost, lightweight autonomous delivery robot, will use its $4.2 million raise for customer acquisition, geographic expansion, and product development.
Last mile logistics, the challenge of getting goods from smaller distribution hubs, often based on the fringes of cities, to final delivery destinations, is the achilles heel of speedy logistics. Amazon has moved heaven and earth, first via USPS and now with a fleet of its own delivery trucks and drivers, to ensure speedy last-mile delivery.
The reason that last mile logistics is such a headache for logistics companies is because it’s where large, efficient shipments become individual logistical challenges fraught with unique handling requirements, finicky directions, and uncertain coordination with customers. But it also has a key advantage: the last mile—a term of art that just means the last local leg of a delivery—occurs over short distances from a static distribution base, making it an exciting use case for automation. 
“Last-mile delivery is the quintessential example of a sector that is ripe for innovation, owing to a powerful confluence of advancing technology, demographics, social values and consumer models. Conventional approaches have left businesses and consumers with few choices in this new environment as they struggle to keep pace with surging demand – burdened by the costs, regulatory, and logistical challenges of a legacy infrastructure,” says Luke Schneider, who took the helm as CEO of Refraction AI in fall 2020. “Our platform uses technology that exists today in an innovative way, to get people the things they need, when they need them, where they live. And we’re doing so in a way that reduces business’ costs, makes roads less congested, and eliminates carbon emissions.” 
Enter the last mile delivery robots. A fleet of delivery robots that coordinate delivery with customers via an integrated app and return to base when done could upend the logistics sector while freeing up increasingly congested road space. According to an Allied Market Research Report on Global Autonomous Last-Mile Delivery, compound annual growth in the last-mile delivery sector over the next 10 years could exceed 14 percent, with the autonomous delivery segment projected to grow at over 24 percent from $11.9 billion in 2021 to more than $84 billion globally by 2031.
REV-1 is one example of a last-mile delivery robot. It’s small, allowing the robot to operate in both the bike lane and on roads, which increases route flexibility and safety. The company was founded by roboticists and professors at the University of Michigan and like other autonomous mobile robotics firms its first application was with restaurant and grocery partners. But in the age of online shopping, logistics is the bigger growth opportunity. The company expects to expand across the gamut of last-mile delivery.  
“With a tremendous potential to impact the future of last-mile goods delivery, Refraction AI is incredibly well-positioned because their solution is up and running today,” says Jamie Goldstein, founder and partner of Pillar VC, which led the seed round. “We believe Refraction AI will create the de facto standard for this rapidly-expanding category; the combination of technology, momentum and leadership makes the company poised to break down barriers to AV for any business, which in turn increases access to goods for households that need them.” More