March 19, 2025

Robotics

The biggest robotics news from NVIDIA GTC day 2 – The Robot Report

Day two of NVIDIA GTC is behind us. The highlight of the day was NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote session at the San Jose Arena. The arena was packed to the rafters with an estimated 16,000 attendees. Huang presented for nearly two hours, and at one point, brought the Disney BDX robot up on stage with him. The Disney BDX robot entertained the crowd while NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discussed new robot products. | Credit:

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Robotics

Squirrel-inspired leaping robot can stick a landing on a branch

Engineers have designed robots that crawl, swim, fly and even slither like a snake, but no robot can hold a candle to a squirrel, which can parkour through a thicket of branches, leap across perilous gaps and execute pinpoint landings on the flimsiest of branches. University of California, Berkeley, biologists and engineers are trying to remedy that situation. Based on studies of the biomechanics of squirrel leaps and landings, they have designed a hopping robot

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The inspirations behind big Netflix Games and pushing transmedia boundaries

Netflix Games did a panel on the inspirations behind big-effort games at Netflix and the shows they’re based on. Jason Altman, head of transmedia at Netflix, led a panel at Netflix Games’ side event at the Game Developers Conference. Bill Jackson of Netflix Games said Squid Game Unleashed was a huge opportunity, but he added, “We knew had to get it right.” He said the show was quite dark and the game team decided they

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A key DeepMind robotics researcher left Google, and Nvidia has already backed his stealth startup  | TechCrunch

A senior research scientist at DeepMind who worked on robotics and AI has left Google to create his own robotics startup, called Generalist AI, and has already obtained investment from Nvidia, TechCrunch has learned. Pete Florence was listed as co-founder and CEO of Generalist AI at a panel at Nvidia’s GTC conference in San Jose yesterday. The panel was for portfolio companies of Nvidia’s VC arm, NVentures. NVentures has become an especially active venture capital

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Squirrel Strategy Spurs Salto’s Stable Springing

3 min read Evan Ackerman is IEEE Spectrum’s robotics editor. The one-legged leaping robot Salto is learning a new balancing act, courtesy of squirrels. Original photos: Justin Yim/UC Berkeley; J. Exp. Biol. 2025 When you see a squirrel jump to a branch, you might think (and I myself thought, up until just now) that they’re doing what birds and primates would do to stick the landing: just grabbing the branch and hanging on. But it

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‘Every software company is an AI company now,’ says AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli

“The enthusiasm into AI actually carries over into everything, which effectively impacts all startups,” said AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli when asked if investors remain as excited about emerging startups outside of AI. According to Kohli, AI startups make up nearly 40% of the startups on AngelList’s platform. Today on Equity, Mary Ann Azevedo caught up with Kohli to discuss how AngelList has evolved its model — from SPVs to collaborating with larger funds, how AI

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Hardware

60 Million Android Users Infected By Malicious Vapor App Threat On Google Play

Bitdefender reports that more than 60 million users have recently downloaded applications used in massive ad fraud campaigns from the Play Store. The fraud campaign, code-named “Vapor,” allows attackers to lure users into downloading apps that make them vulnerable to cyberattacks. The cat-and-mouse game between Google and hackers continues; many hackers upload applications daily. However, Google has some security measures in place to help identify apps that are laden with viruses. If this is the

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Tera AI comes out of stealth with $7.8M to provide visual navigation for robots | TechCrunch

Robots are part of an exciting new frontier in tech, but here’s the challenge: Robots rely on arrays of sensors, external signals like GPS and Wi-Fi, and customized software to navigate their environments. Further, robotics often involves expensive, ready-made hardware solutions that include built-in software and sensors designed for specific tasks, like estimating relative motion. These products require complex integration and are limited to specific use cases. As a result, most robots today cannot move

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Hardware

Google’s Gemini AI Can Now Help You Code, Generate Podcasts And More New Tricks

Yesterday, Google announced that it has updated its Gemini AI tool with two new additions; a Canvas feature, which allows users to fine-tune documents and code, and an Audio Overview feature that transforms documents into audio files similar to podcasts. These additions were shared in a blog post on Tuesday by Dave Citron, Senior Director of Product Management at Google. Regarding the Canvas feature, Google revealed that it was created to make writing and coding

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Robotics

Women in robotics breakfast returns to Robotics Summit – The Robot Report

Women working within the robotics industry often find they might be one of the only ones on their team or even at their company. This can be an isolating experience, making it difficult for women in robotics to find a community to support them. Currently, women make up 48% of the total workforce and just 34% of the STEM workforce, according to the National Girls Collaborative Project. When it comes to engineering and robotics roles, the

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