Andra Keay

6 days ago | robotsandstartups.substack.com | Andra Keay

SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son is envisaging setting up a $1 trillion industrial complex in Arizona that will build robots and artificial intelligence, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Son is seeking to team up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co for the project, which is aimed at bringing back high-end tech manufacturing to the U.S. and to create a version of China's vast manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, the report said.

3 weeks ago | robotsandstartups.substack.com | Andra Keay

In the first of a series of “Automation Spotlights” from the IEEE RAS Automation Technical Cluster Ken Goldberg reveals how real-world robot deployments and AI can help bridge the 100,000-year data gap between robotics and language models—unlocking the path to general-purpose robots. Professor Ken Goldberg highlighted the challenges in robotics data collection, noting that current datasets are orders of magnitude smaller than those for vision and language models.

3 weeks ago | robotsandstartups.substack.com | Andra Keay

Actually let’s make that the SIX things that humanoid robots need to scale, thanks to Ingo Keller’s suggestion to include Societal Acceptance. Funding/FinancingFacilitiesSupply ChainSkillsSupport and ServiceSocietal Acceptance. I shared these thoughts on a great panel at the close of The Humanoids Summit in London, with Jenny Read from ARIA, Rory Daniels from TechUK, Ingo Keller from the National Robotarium and Rueben Scriven from Interact Analysis.

1 month ago | robotsandstartups.substack.com | Andra Keay

Next newsletter I’ll share more information about the robotics companies and startups exhibiting and demoing at ICRA - and some other interesting events - hopefully also sharing the recording of Tessa Lau’s amazing plenary session on what building a robotics company really involves. The Initial Findings from the IEEE RAS Humanoids Standards Study Group, chaired by Aaron Prather of ASTM - Full Report coming soon!Robots & Startups is a reader-supported publication.

1 month ago | robotsandstartups.substack.com | Andra Keay

Congratulations to Kinisi, the future of physical intelligence, for winning the Automate Start-up Challenge! A well deserved win. Here’s some more information about Kinisi’s KR1 robot c/o the BBC. Hat tip also to 3Laws Robotics, a CalTech spinout from Los Angeles with a dynamic universal safety layer. The ultrasonic sensor from Sonair looked very interesting too. Wonder who we’ll see at the ICRA 2025 Startup Challenge this coming week! Or on the Innovation Stage.