Brian Heater, Author at TechCrunch

Google I/O set for May 14, 15

Brian Heater — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 20:49:07 +0000

The sun is peeking out behind the clouds and the birds are singing. That can only mean one thing: developer season is nearly upon us. While the rest of you are out there touching the proverbial and literal grass, the world’s developers are jamming into conference halls to find out what the next year holds […]

Humanoid robots face continued skepticism at Modex

Brian Heater — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 18:15:06 +0000

If your robotics startup is looking to raise, there’s close to a 100% chance you’re going to get two questions from potential investors: 1) How are you incorporating generative AI? and 2) Have you consider building a humanoid? The first is easy enough to answer. If you’re running a robotics firm in 2024, you have […]

Behold, TruckBot

Brian Heater — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 23:26:13 +0000

One undeniable trend from this year’s Modex conference: suddenly everyone is into truck unloading. The past couple of years have gone from a few select companies to seemingly everyone in and around warehouse robotics looking to tackle the problem. Most solutions are some variation on a basic theme: a robotic arm attached to a mobile […]

Cypher’s inventory drone launches from an autonomous mobile robot base

Brian Heater — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 21:42:13 +0000

Doing inventory sucks. I feel the need to reiterate this any time I discuss the topic here. Having performed a bit of it during my years of retail work, I can personally attest to the fact that it’s a mind-numbing bore. It is, therefore, a prime candidate for automation. After all, two of the main […]

Reflex Robotics’ wheeled humanoid is here to grab you a snack

Brian Heater — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 20:35:25 +0000

Agility’s Digit wasn’t the only humanoid holding court at Modex in Atlanta this week. On the opposite end of the Georgia World Congress Center, Reflex Robotics, a younger and smaller startup, was drawing its own crowd. The booth was centered on a single demo running throughout the week. Passersby requested something from the Reflex robot, […]

Verve Motion’s robot backpack helps workers lighten their load

Brian Heater — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 18:40:01 +0000

Wander the Modex floor long enough and you’ll stumble upon some wearable robotics. The category has nowhere near the presence of AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) or storage and retrieval systems, but exosuits are increasing in acceptance for their ability to eliminate the repetitive stress that comes with lifting and moving heavy loads all day. While […]

Locus Robotics’ success is a tale of focusing on what works

Brian Heater — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 17:48:03 +0000

“We’re fundamentally a software company,” Locus CEO Rick Faulk says with a laugh. We look like a robot company, but we’re actually a software company.” It’s a familiar refrain from companies whose most public-facing products are hardware. That’s certainly the case with Locus, which produces the best-known AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) not made by Amazon. […]

The loneliness of the robotic humanoid

Brian Heater — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 22:45:33 +0000

Perhaps a few years from now, the halls of the Georgia World Congress Center will be peppered with humanoid robots the week of Modex. In 2024, however, Digit stands alone at the supply chain show. It’s a testament to Agility’s healthy head start over competitors like Figure, Tesla, 1X and Apptronik. This time last year […]

Covariant is building ChatGPT for robots

Brian Heater — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 13:00:27 +0000

Covariant this week announced the launch of RFM-1 (Robotics Foundation Model 1). Peter Chen, the co-founder and CEO of the UC Berkeley artificial intelligence spinout tells TechCrunch the platform, “is basically a large language model (LLM), but for robot language.” RFM-1 is the result of, among other things, a massive trove of data collected from […]

Hey, it’s me, Brian’s less creepy Apple Vision Pro Persona

Brian Heater — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 20:08:48 +0000

Hey. Sorry to call you out of the blue. No, no, nothing serious. I’m fine. I wanted to apologize for freaking you out last time. I wasn’t myself. But I’ve changed. Honestly, I don’t even know who I was back then. It was all very new. I’ve been working on myself, and I think the […]

AALTO seeks to democratize high-speed internet access through solar-powered drones

Brian Heater — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 22:14:37 +0000

In the beginning of 2021, Alphabet shuttered Loon. It was a familiar story within the annals of Google X history: an ambitious moonshot with tremendous upside that sputtered out prior to gaining any sort of meaningful traction after nearly a decade. “Despite Loon’s extraordinary technical progress,” X explains with a tinge of melancholy on the […]

Apple M3 MacBook Air review: Still the best Mac for most

Brian Heater — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 14:00:29 +0000

Before we go any further, a question: What makes a computer an AI computer? Is it simply the ability to execute AI-powered tasks? To run LLMs locally? Is it something deeper? Is any computer that is capable of running any form of artificial intelligence/machine learning fundamentally an AI computer? It’s a simple question on the […]

Headspace brings meditation to Meta Quest

Brian Heater — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 16:18:11 +0000

Mindfulness and meditation apps have tremendous potential in the world of extended reality. The full immersion created by headsets like the Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro offer great potential to kickstart such practices, which are notoriously difficult to both begin and maintain. As such, partnership between leading meditation app Headspace and Quest-maker Meta is […]

Babylon Micro-Farms is bringing vertical farming to K-12 classes

Brian Heater — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 15:20:56 +0000

In an e-mail exchange, Babylon Micro-Farms CEO Alexander Oleson tells me “we’ll have these in every school and apartment one day.” It’s a nice vision, and really the level of belief/commitment required to run a startup — particularly in a field as oft-fraught at vertical farming. With a price point of $6,500, however, the STEM […]

Amazon teams with recycling robot firm to track package waste

Brian Heater — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 13:00:37 +0000

Amazon generates a lot of trash. Precisely how much is a matter of some debate. In 2021, the company says it used 214 million or so pounds of single-use plastic in its packaging. Nonprofit ocean conservation firm Oceana, on the other hand, put that figure at approximately ~700 million pounds. That’s a huge gulf, but […]

Agility Robotics’ new CEO is ‘focused on the here and now’

Brian Heater — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 20:25:58 +0000

There was nothing else like Digit on the ProMat floor last year. The manufacturing supply chain event has gradually morphed into a tech show in recent years. Many of the biggest names in the space were present, showcasing autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), bin picking arms and automated storage and retrieval systems. But Agility’s small army […]

Right to repair bill targeting parts pairing passes Oregon House

Brian Heater — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 15:14:23 +0000

The Oregon House this week passed a right to repair bill by nearly a 3-to-1 margin at 42 votes to 13. If signed into law, the northwestern state wouldn’t be the first in the union to pass a right to repair bill (more like the fourth), but the legislation contains aggressive language that goes beyond […]

Nothing’s budget Phone (2a) hits preorder at $349

Brian Heater — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 12:30:20 +0000

The much-teased and oft-leaked Nothing Phone (2a) is now officially official, just under a week after it made its limited debut at the company’s MWC after party. Nothing’s third phone is the first that goes directly after the mid-tier/budget space, with a starting price of $349. While preorders open today, there’s an important caveat in […]

Shure enters the wireless lav mic business

Brian Heater — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 23:06:27 +0000

Consumer lapel mics are one of the more interesting consumer electronics trends of recent years. Prior to this, lavalier microphones and their ilk were largely the domain of professional film crews. While some plug-in solutions have emerged for smartphones over the years, it wasn’t until recently that one could purchase an affordable set to capture […]

Ultraleap is bringing haptic touch to cars and VR headsets

Brian Heater — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 19:26:01 +0000

In May 2019, Ultrahaptics and Leap Motion became Ultraleap (not to be confused with Magic Leap, which operates in the same space). It’s a name change representing the marriage of two different, yet related, tech startups. Ultrahaptics naturally got top billing, as it was the one doing the acquiring – paying around $30 million for […]