Robotics News

Thursday, February 18, 2010

North End Tech takes in $3.3M in new funding
North End Technologies Inc., a New Hampshire robotics and communications startup, has landed $3.26 million of a planned $4.3 million round of funding according to federal documents.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Akamai CEO Sagan named to iRobot board
Paul Sagan, the CEO of Cambridge content delivery network firm Akamai Technologies Inc., has joined the board of iRobot Inc., the Bedford developer of consumer, industrial and military robots.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Greiner's CyPhy Works raises $1.8M in funding
CyPhy Works Inc. has landed $1.8 million in funding. The company, led by iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner, changed its name from the Droid Works in December.
Robots find niche in surgery, rehabilitation and drug development
Companies making machines that rehabilitate muscles with limited motion, perform surgery and help find new drugs are among the hottest in the robotics industry.

Monday, February 1, 2010

DARPA awards $32M for Boston Dynamics robot
Boston Dynamics Inc. reports it has landed $32 million from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop a Big Dog-like robot to carry supplies for U.S. Marines.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Cardiorobotics grabs $5M in VC financing
Cardiorobotics Inc., maker of the cardioARM, a snake-like, remote-controlled robotic probe intended to minimize incisions necessary for surgical procedures, has landed $5 million in venture capital.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Robotics startup Harvest Automation pulls in $4M tranche
Harvest Automation Inc. has raised a $4 millon tranche of a Series A round of funding. The financing round was led by Life Sciences Partners and MidPoint Food & AG fund LP.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Out after '09, In with '10
Mass High Tech staff members offered up their thoughts on which trends and technologies can fade away, or at least step back from the podium, with the passing of 2009, and what to watch for in the new year.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

iRobot co-founder wins funds to inspect bridges, renames robotics startup
CyPhy Works Inc., the company formerly known as The Droid Works and founded by iRobot Corp. co-founder Helen Greiner, has landed a $2.4 million research award from the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Surgical robots await medical, investment acceptance
The remotely controlled, robot-assisted surgery technology pie is a promising one. Yet, for Massachusetts investors, scientists and doctors, a number of obstacles are blocking them from a hefty slice.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Study: Software leads tech growth in Mass.
Technology company CEOs, industry group to officials and academia gathered at Communispace Corp. in Watertown this morning to listen to the findings from a UMass study on Massachusetts’ tech economy and to hear Gov. Deval Patrick’s keynote address on the state of the IT sector in the commonwealth.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Corindus raises $4.7M in equity funds
Vascular robotic systems developer Corindus Inc. has pulled in $4.68 million of a planned $10 million equity financing. The Natick-based company designs, develops and markets remote control systems for cardiology operations.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

MHT All-Star Rodney Brooks: Roots of an industry
Rodney Brooks, CTO of Heartland Robotics Inc. and co-founder of iRobot Corp., won the Mass High Tech All-Star Distinguished Achievement award for 2009. Read about how Brooks' first robot he built at the age of 16 eventually turned into a career centered around that technology.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

MassTLC merges MassNetComms into the fold
Mass Technology Leadership Council Inc. reports it is merging with the Massachusetts Network Communications Council, making a super-group of tech boosterism that now combines consumer and enterprise software, hardware, robotics, Internet commerce, network devices, network management and security software, and mobile software and hardware.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Loofbourrow to head up iRobot senior health unit
IRobot Corp. today announced a new business unit focused on utilizing robotics for senior citizen healthcare, and named Authoria Inc. founder and former CEO Tod Loofbourrow as president of the new group.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Artaic founder and CEO Acworth doubles in paranormal investigating
Boston entrepreneur Ted Acworth has never really held a job you could call “normal.” His current company, Artaic LLC, does robot-made mosaic installations and counts two Boston hospitals among its growing list of customers. With his work at Artaic growing more intense, Acworth has had to drop a sideline as a UFO investigator, though he's picked up work as a ghost hunter.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

WPI robotics team wins NASA lunar excavation contest
A team from Worcester Polytechnic Institute — Paul’s Robotics, led by WPI undergraduate robotics engineering major Paul Ventimiglia — has won the $500,000 grand prize from a NASA lunar excavation robotics contest, the 2009 Regolith (moondust) Excavation Challenge, in California.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Ahura Scientific, QinetiQ deal brings spectrometry to robots
Ahura Scientific Inc. reports it has partnered with QinetiQ North America’s Technology Solutions Group to add Ahura’s spectrometry technology to QinetiQ’s Talon robots. Under terms of the agreement, the companies will add a compact, laboratory-grade Raman spectrometer to Talon military robots.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Born in the Recession: Change, efficiency and messaging drove iRobot's downturn survival
Bedford-based iRobot Corp. was founded in Somerville in 1990, just in time for an economic downturn that would last the next couple of years. Today, iRobot is a profitable public company known for making robots that vacuum floors and help soldiers disarm bombs.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Robonica aims to shift former board game hub to robotic games
It’s been nearly two decades since the North Shore was churning out Monopoly and other Parker Brothers board games, but a new Beverly company, Robonica, hopes to revive that legacy by mixing traditional game play with emerging robotics technology.