Drones keep beachgoers safe and the FBI cracks down on “phone of the future” scam.

Industrial Robot sales for Q2 are up 20% 📈

Steph Newton

Published in

Hardware News

4 min readSep 5, 2019

What’s new in hardware

Delivery robots are coming to 100 universities over the next couple of years, at least according to Starship Technologies. (TechCrunch)
Waymo released a huge autonomous driving dataset for free to help spur self-driving car research. (CNET)
Q2 orders for industrial robots have increased by almost 20% over last year in the United States. (Reuters)
This week in cautionary tales: the story of a crowdfunded “smartphone” scam that eventually got the FBI involved. (The Verge)
IoT for the elderly is an enormous business opportunity. (Digital Trends)

Offbeat Tidbits You Might’ve Missed:

What really happens when a drone crashes into your face? (Popular Mechanics)
Russia’s sending a humanoid robot to live on the International Space Station for 10 days. (Popular Mechanics)
Crocodile-spotting drones have been deployed in Australia to keep beachgoers safe. (ZDNet)

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Spectroplast, a silicone 3D printing service provider, has raised $1.54 million in seed funding from AM Ventures Holding in Germany. The money raised will be used to help the company scale its production services and find its position as a leader in the field.
Autonomous delivery robot startup Starship Technologies has secured $40 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Morpheus Ventures with participation from Shasta Ventures, Matrix Partners, MetaPlanet Holdings, TDK Ventures, Qu Ventures, and others. This fresh infusion of capital brings the San Francisco-based company’s total raised to over $80 million, following two seed rounds totaling $42.2 million. CEO Lex Bayer announced that this new round of funding will be used to grow Starship’s geographic footprint.
Form Energy, a Massachusetts-based company developing systems incorporating long-duration storage, has raised $40 million in Series B funding. The round was led by the corporate venture capital vehicle of Italy’s Eni Group, Eni Next LLC.
San Francisco-based startup Tibit Communications has raised $25 million in Series B funding. Intel Capital led the round and was later joined by Swisscom Ventures and AJU IB Investment. The company announced that they will be using the funds to support the development of its MicroPlug optical line terminal.
CropX, a four-year-old startup that helps farmers optimize crops with a hardware soil sensor and cloud-based analytics software, has raised $10 million in funding from Innovation Endeavors, Sumitomo Corp., Armada Capital, Finistere Ventures, Germin8 Ventures, TaL Capital, GreenSoil Investments, and the equity crowdfunding company OurCrowd.
IoT platform developer Idein has secured a total of $7.8 million investment in its latest round of funding, which was led by Japan-based venture capital firm Global Brain. Joining the round were new investors Hakuodo DY Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, and Sony Financial Ventures. Also participating was DG Daiwa Ventures, who had previously invested in Idein.
Porsche has acquired a minority stake in TriEye, a two-year-old Tel Aviv-based maker of an HD shortwave infrared camera that promises to help cars navigate through adverse weather. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Sphero, the maker of connected STEAM toys, has acquired LittleBits, another connected toy company that teaches kids to code. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Food delivery company DoorDash has acquired Scotty Labs, a startup focused on developing autonomous and remote-controlled vehicle technology. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.