apptronik

How large a role humanoids will play in that ecosystem is, perhaps, the biggest question on everyone’s mind at the moment.

Robots made their stage debut the day after New Year’s 1921. More than half-a-century before the world caught its first glimpse of George Lucas’ droids, a small army of silvery humanoids took to the stages of the First Czechoslovak Republic. They were, for all intents and purposes, humanoids: two arms,…

The rise of humanoid robots didn’t happen overnight, but a kind of perfect storm has accelerated the phenomenon over the past year and change. The foundation, of course, is decades of research. Toiling away in research facilities and R&D departments laid the ground work for a new generation of technology.…

A number of native Detroiters have asked me what I think about their city so far. The simple answer is that I don’t feel qualified to offer much insight yet. I’ve been here for roughly three days as I write this, and I haven’t seen all that much of the…

Jeff Cardenas pulls out his MacBook. Apptronik’s co-founder and CEO has a slideshow he wants to show, running down the Austin startup’s seven-year history. It does, indeed, take a bit of contextualizing. Like many fellow robotics firms, the company was fueled by government contracts in its earliest days. First up…