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Robots

This Month

Andromeda co-founder Grace Brown.

A 25-year-old Melburnian now has a $100m robot helper start-up

Female founders are still struggling to receive funding, but Grace Brown’s robotics start-up Andromeda just banked a $23 million series A funding round.

August

MYOB chief people officer Sally Elson with staff at their Melbourne offices discusses AI adoption and why HR managers need to be involved.

The AI era is HR’s time to shine. But they’re not invited

Australia’s top bosses think their people chiefs are not up to managing the artificial intelligence transition, and that’s a big problem.

Robot

Robots could unleash big gains in the care economy, says PC

In its final report before next week’s roundtable, the Productivity Commission also urged the government to create uniform rules on AI in the care sector.

In China, robots are no longer just tools, they are the new workforce

Millions of cyborgs and a strategic grip on the critical metals that power them is how Beijing plans to maintain its global manufacturing edge.

June

The AI revolution is moving much faster than thought 12 months ago.

The aspect of AI that means Australia could miss out

More than three in four robotics patents in the past 20 years are from China. How do we make the most of that?

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Stacked Farm chief operating officer Sam Canavan and chief executive Daniel Tzvetkoff say indoor farming can happily co-exist with traditional methods.

The robot farm that allows producers to ‘play god’

Stacked Farm’s vertical farming initiative has won the Financial Review Sustainability Leaders agriculture and environment category, as well as being the overall winner for innovation.

Waymo driverless cabs have become more conspicuous on the streets of San Francisco.

Why it’s so hard to make a reliable self-driving car

The promised rollout of fully autonomous vehicles remains largely unfulfilled, with every advance seemingly matched by a serious setback.

We’ve seen the future, and it’s wearing Birkenstocks

Roborock’s Saros Z70 marks the beginning of the era where robots follow us around the house and pick up after us.

May

Why it pays to use AI on the sly at work

Research shows staff are likely to be downgraded for owning up to using AI, highlighting the need for office guidelines to encourage workers to use it openly.

‘Black Mirror’ showed us a future. Some of it is here now.

The long-running tech drama always felt as if it took place in a dystopian near future. How much of that future has come to pass?

April

Robotic arms swirling into action at the Zeekr factory’s body shop in Ningbo, China.

China has an army of robots on its side in the tariff war

Enormous investments in factory equipment and artificial intelligence are giving Beijing an edge in car manufacturing and other industries.

A robot takes part in what is billed as the world’s first robot half marathon during the Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon in Beijing.

China’s first robot marathon runners trip, emit smoke, fall apart

In the world’s first half-marathon for androids, just four out of 21 robotic runners completed the race in Beijing’s southern tech hub of E-Town.

Eufy E20 3-in-1 robovac.

Just right for your holiday home: the robovac that gives some stick

Eufy’s E20 may not be as good at cleaning as other robots, but at least it gives you the tools to finish the job.

March

Fancy a robot to clean your windows? This one will give it a shot

It’s early days in the advent of window-cleaning robots, and they don’t do a terrific job. But Ecovacs’ Winbot W2 Pro Omni doesn’t do a bad job, either.

The obstacle-climbing robot vacuum we wish we could afford to keep

Getting over tiny steps is just one of a few new features in Dreame’s X50 Ultra mopping robovac. It’s also got a great anti-tangle system and a steep price.

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Nvidia’s co-founder and chief executive Jensen Huang announces its product update at its GPU Technology Conference.

Nvidia CEO hypes AI with new chips and ‘supercharged humanoid robots’

Jensen Huang laid out plans for more powerful processors, a model for robotics and “personal AI supercomputers”.

You can’t unsee this terrifying ‘man-suit’ android

The inventors of the Protoclone hope it can be a skin for future AI applications. In the meantime, it is hanging around looking scary.

January

The robots surround the soccer ball.

Why the world needs lazier robots

Machines need to get better at ignoring stuff because right now the energy they guzzle to process all the data they receive makes them a global warming risk.

Stacked Farm is planning to rapidly expand how much fresh produce it harvests.

Australia’s next robot farm wants to grow your burger garnish

Investors have lost billions on vertical farming start-ups, but a Gold Coast business says it has a model that stacks up, luring investment from Tribeca and Tayside.

Robot puts a sock in it for world’s biggest gadget fest

CES – formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show – starts officially on Wednesday, but already a theme has emerged, and it doesn’t take AI to figure out what it is.

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/topic/robots-jkh