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Following a recent announcement that Amazon and iRobot have terminated their $1.4 billion merger agreement, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Associate Director for Merger Analysis Nathan Soderstrom released a statement expressing the Biden regulators’ pleasure at the dissolution. “We are pleased that Amazon and iRobot have abandoned their proposed transaction…The Commission’s investigation revealed significant concerns about the transaction’s potential competitive effects,” Soderstrom said in the statement. U.S. federal lawmakers, including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, previously called on the FTC to block the merger in a joint letter. “iRobot is a powerful market incumbent, and Amazon, given its vast resources, history...

Technology company iRobot is undergoing major layoffs after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and European regulators opposed its acquisition by Amazon on Monday, multiple outlets reported. Amazon had planned to acquire iRobot, which is most known for making robot vacuums, but the deal could not go through because of regulatory hurdles, according to a press release announcing the termination. iRobot immediately disclosed impending layoffs affecting about 350 employees, constituting 31% of its total workforce, after the termination announcement. The companies primarily attributed the dissolution of the deal to the European Union (EU), stating in the press release that “Amazon’s proposed...

A New York lawyer has found himself in trouble in a lawsuit between a man and the airline Avianca Holding S.A. after presenting nonexistent citations in the case generated by ChatGPT. The case involved a man named Roberto Mata suing Avianca, claiming he was injured when a metal service cart struck his knee during a flight. Injury claims are typically uninteresting, aside from the broader cultural considerations about how the U.S. is so litigious, but the case took an interesting twist after the airline attempted to have the case dismissed. The New York Times reported Saturday that in response to...

In the fall of 2020, gig workers in Venezuela posted a series of images to online forums where they gathered to talk shop. The photos were mundane, if sometimes intimate, household scenes captured from low angles—including some you really wouldn’t want shared on the Internet. In one particularly revealing shot, a young woman in a lavender T-shirt sits on the toilet, her shorts pulled down to mid-thigh. The images were not taken by a person, but by development versions of iRobot’s Roomba J7 series robot vacuum. They were then sent to Scale AI, a startup that contracts workers around the...

A robot escaped from a testing area in Perm, a city not far from the Urals, and made it on to a busy junction, baffling passersby, but also disturbing traffic. “The robot was learning automatic movement algorithms on the testing ground, these functions will feature in the latest version of the Promobot.” The co-founder of the robot’s maker, Oleg Kivokurtsev, told ura.ru news agency. “Our engineer drove onto the testing ground and forgot to close the gates. So the robot escaped and went on his little adventure.” Kivokurtsev explained.

The American government is officially putting a giant vote of confidence behind self-driving cars. And the cash to back it up. Today, US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is announcing a nearly $4 billion plan that’ll help manufacturers and tech companies develop safe, automated vehicles in the next ten years with real-world pilot projects. It’s all part of President Obama’s plan to make American transportation as futuristic as possible. The funds, which have been set aside in the proposed federal budget for 2017, will go toward pilot programs in specific transportation corridors in the US. The government will then work with...

It seems to have happened as technicians were assembling the machine. "When the robot started up, it grabbed the man and thrust him against a metal slab," explains the Local. It's not clear how big the robot is, but a VW spokesperson says it is not one of the newer lightweight models designed to work alongside humans on the production line.

The federal government is financing the creation of robots that can assist the elderly and make sure they are eating healthily.A nearly $800,000 project from the National Science Foundation (NSF) is pairing the University of Pennsylvania with a robot company to create the machines, which will be able to deliver glasses of water to senior citizens.The government said that the project is necessary due to a demographic crisis in America where soon there will not be enough young people to take care of their elders.“This Partnership For Innovation project develops and tests the use of service robots to monitor and...

SNIPPET: "Security concerns ahead of this summer's Brazilian World Cup have increased after a football fan was beaten to death in host city Sao Paulo." SNIPPET: "There are serious concerns about the safety of travelling supporters at this summer's World Cup after more than 30 people were killed in 2013 as a result of football-related violence. One of Brazil’s biggest criminal gangs last year promised a ‘Tournament of Terror’. The threat was issued by Sau Paulo's 'First Capital of the Command', who in 2012 was a group behind the murder of more than a hundred of the city’s police officers."

“We’ve created a micro-bimorph dual coil that functions as a powerful torsional muscle, driven thermally or electro-thermally by the phase transition of vanadium dioxide,” said Junqiao Wu, the project’s lead scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (Berkeley Labs). ... Dr. Koh suggests how these micro-muscles will change the game of humanoid robotics. “Our materials mimic those of the human muscle, responding quickly to electrical impulses, instead of slowly for mechanisms driven by hydraulics. Robots move in a jerky manner because of this mechanism. Now, imagine artificial muscles which are pliable, extendable and react in a...

I posted a legit article about the President being threatened. Now why was it removed?

Human warriors have long spoken of the bonds forged in combat and of becoming a "band of brothers." The fact that some of those fellow soldiers are made of metal has not discouraged human feelings toward them. Thousands of robots now fight with humans on modern battlefields that resemble scenes from science fiction movies such as "Terminator Salvation." But the real world poses a more complex situation than humans versus robots, and has added new twists to the psychology of war. "One of the psychologically interesting things is that these systems aren't designed to promote intimacy, and yet we're seeing...

June 19, 2008 -- IRobot, best known for their cute Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, has teamed up with Metal Storm, purveyors of the million-rounds-per-minute electric gun, to create a slick, Terminator-like war robot for the U.S. military. The as yet unnamed war bot is being marketed for "border patrol" and "crowd control" scenarios, although other military situations are also under consideration. "We want our soldiers to have the option of controlling a robot that could go ahead and investigate, engage or deter an enemy and not put human soldiers at risk," said a spokesman for Metal Storm who wished to...

Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have killed 1,678 U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan since July 2003, according to Georgia-based Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. The death toll could have been much higher without the help of 5,000 IED-detecting robots that, according to CBS News, have found 10,000 roadside bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the next step in the evolution of wartime robots looks to go from saving lives to taking them. The U.S. Army soon plans to deploy armed robots with firepower into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Designed by Foster-Miller, these robots, known as SWORDS (Special...

RoboCops and robot soldiers got a little closer to reality Thursday as a maker of floor-cleaning automatons teamed up with a stun-gun manufacturer to arm track-wheeled 'bots for the police and the Pentagon. By adding Tasers to robots it already makes for the military, iRobot Corp. (IRBT) says it hopes to give soldiers and law enforcement a defensive, non-lethal tool. But some observers fear such developments could ultimately lead to robots capable of deciding on their own when to shoot and kill. "It's one more step in that direction," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an Alexandria, Va.-based military research...

The military - increasing its reliance on robots in war - soon will use explosive-sniffing versions to better detect roadside bombs accounting for more than 70 percent of the U.S. casualties in Iraq. Fido is the first robot with an explosives sensor integrated into its body. iRobot Corp. is filling the military's first order of 100 in this southwest Ohio city and will begin shipping the robots over the next few months. There are nearly 5,000 robots in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from about 150 in 2004. Soldiers use them to search caves and buildings for insurgents, detect mines and...

The new RedOwl “sniper detection and surveillance” robot is a remote, deployable sensor suite designed to provide early warning information, gunshot detection, intelligence, surveillance and targeting capabilities to military and government agencies. RedOwl is a program led by Boston University with iRobot, Insight Technology and BioMimetic Systems, a Boston U spinout company. The RedOwl equipped PackBot has been field-tested for the Army at a rifle and trapshooting range. The RedOwl robot also employs a suite of advanced optics including a thermal camera, 300X zoom daylight/infrared camera, infrared laser illuminators, a rangefinder, high intensity white driving light, and voice communication microphones...

Q. You recently won some big contracts with the United States military and the German military for your PackBot robots, which can be used to dispose of improvised explosive devices. A. The use of I.E.D.’s by the enemy, specifically in Iraq, is driving this interest. Locating these bombs is extremely threatening and then to defuse them is an incredibly challenging job. Robots are proving to be highly effective to address this. Now, rather than put a soldier at risk, you can put a robot at risk. Q. Where are those robots being used now? A. We have over 500 PackBot...

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 19 - Are movies growing bigger as theater audiences are becoming smaller? That's one conclusion to draw from the box-office results of 2004, as Hollywood pursued its penchant for big-budget event films - from Warner Brothers' "Troy" to 20th Century Fox's "I, Robot," to Sony Pictures' "Spider-Man 2" - but the number of moviegoers in the United States dropped for the second year in a row. With nearly two weeks to go before the end of 2004, domestic box-office receipts appeared likely to top last year's total of $9.27 billion, nearing $9.4 billion, according to Exhibitor Relations,...

BOSTON - In a trailblazing pairing of robotics and tractor companies, iRobot and John Deere announced plans Monday to build a 9-foot-long semi-autonomous battlefield vehicle. Burlington-based iRobot Corp. will adapt the artificial intelligence technology used in its Roomba vacuums and portable PackBot military robots for a two-seat John Deere utility vehicle similar to ones the Pentagon (news - web sites) already uses. The Military Robotic Gator, or R-Gator, will be the first of its kind to use off-the-shelf technology, making it easier and less expensive to produce than existing, custom-made vehicles, the companies said. While the Pentagon is expected to...