Winging It: Embracing Impromptu Decisions with Confidence

TechCrunch‘s robotics reporter visited the Bay Area and covered various robotic innovations. The author started with Apple’s recent event that showcased Vision Pro headset that could have some mapping applications. The article then moves on to Alphabet X’s Wing team and its AutoLoader system, which is a fully passive system with a minimal footprint designed to sit in a store’s parking lot. The article then delves into Alphabet X’s lab projects where the focus is mostly on the world’s problems. The article talks about the company’s independence from the rest of Alphabet and roughly 50% of its portfolio being focused on climate change. Towards the end, the article discusses the merger of Franklin Robotics and Harvest Automation forming a single company named Harvest Automation, and Boston Dynamics‘ software update for its quadrupedal robot, Spot, that brings additional visual, thermal, and acoustic inspection capabilities. The article ends with Agility CEO Damion Shelton’s experiment with generative AI controlling Digit with GPT and the possibility of leveraging generative AI that was