In Episode 158 of The Robot Report Podcast, Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman discuss the week’s news. You’ll also hear the State of Warehouse Automation panel that was one of the highlights from the Robotics Summit & Expo. An esteemed panel moderated by Eugene Demaitre, the discussion featured Tim Tetzlaff, vice president, global head of accelerated digitalization at DHL Supply Chain; John Santagate, VP of robotics at Körber Supply Chain; and Adrian Stoch, chief automation officer at GXO. The group discusses best practices, emerging trends, and how the latest robotics innovations are helping supply chain operators overcome major challenges.
The show’s second interview is the last in our series of interviews recorded during the Robotics Summit. Carlos Bielicki, VP of sales from Performance Motion Devices, sat down with Chris Luecke of the Manufacturing Happy Hour.
Covariant Gets Takeover Inquiry From Amazon
Bloomberg reported on July 31 that Amazon is interested in acquiring Covariant. Covariant was valued in 2023 at $625 million. Covariant CEO Peter Chen was a guest on The Robot Report Podcast in episode 135.
Autonomous vehicles fuel $2.7B funding boom in June 2024
Forty-eight companies that make robots or relevant enabling technologies raised a total of $2.7 billion in June 2024. At press time, this was the highest monthly funding total of 2024. It exceeded May’s total by more than $500 million and was more than double the 12-month trailing investments average of $1.3 billion. Robotics investments for the first six months of 2024 totaled about $8.4 billion.
The largest investments were, once again, raised by developers of autonomous driving technologies. San Francisco-based Cruise raised $850 million from owner GM as it restarts its on-road operations. Aptiv raised $816 million, Waabi $200 million, 42dot $185 million, and Tier IV $54 million. It should be noted that these five companies raised more than $2.1 billion alone in June.
Robotics technologies for manufacturing operations also attracted substantial investment. Bright Machines attracted $126 million Series C funding. GrayMatter Robotics, a provider of an AI-powered solution that enables robots to self-program, raised $45 million in Series B funding. And Formic Technologies, a developer of turnkey robotic solutions as a service, raised $27.4 million in Series A funding.
Tesla that killed motorcyclist was in ‘Full Self-Driving’ mode
A Tesla Model S car was in “Full Self-Driving” mode when it hit and killed a 28-year-old motorcyclist in the Seattle area in April, police said, making it at least the second fatal accident involving the technology. The driver was arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide based on his admission that he was looking at his cell phone while using the driver assistant feature.
The NHTSA began a probe of Autopilot in August 2021 after identifying more than a dozen crashes in which Tesla vehicles had hit stationary emergency vehicles and reviewed hundreds of crashes involving Autopilot.
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