Gathering warehouse inventory data — plus an update from ElectroCraft

In Episode 153 of The Robot Report Podcast, editors Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman discuss the news of the week. Our featured guest on the show this week is Sankalp Arora, co-founder and CEO of Gather AI. We catch up with Sankalp to learn how his company‘s drone inventory management product is evolving.

The second featured interview is with Jake Hall, the “Manufacturing Millennial,” and Scott Sizemore, director of commercial marketing at motor provider ElectroCraft.

Show timeline

• 5:45: News
• 25:20: Interview with Sankalp Arora, co-founder and CEO of Gather AI
• 58:59: Interview by Jake Hall, the Manufacturing Millennial, with Scott Sizemore, director of commercial marketing at ElectroCraft

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In the news this week

1. Investor Dean Drako acquires Cobalt Robotics
   • Cobalt Robotics has been acquired by investor Dean Drako, and the name of the security robot firm has been changed to Cobalt AI to more accurately represent the company’s direction and the products it offers.
   • Drako is the founder and CEO of Eagle Eye Networks, in addition to a number of other enterprises and side projects. Cobalt AI fits closest to the Eagle Eye Smart Video Surveillance portfolio.
2. Waymo expands its service area 
   • Robotaxi developer Waymo announced that it’s expanding its service area in Phoenix. The company has added 90 square miles to what was already its largest service area in Metro Phoenix. Waymo’s service now covers 315 square miles of the Valley.
   • In addition, Zoox announced that it will begin testing in Austin and Miami, the fourth and fifth public testing locations for the Amazon subsidiary.
3. OpenAI is restarting its robotics research group
   • OpenAI, which is best known for ChatGPT, is restarting its robotics research group. The San Francisco-based company has been a pioneer in generative artificial intelligence and is returning to robotics after a three-year break.
   • The reboot comes after the company shut down its robotics group in July 2021. That shutdown was prior to all of the interest in generative AI after OpenAI released ChatGPT to the world.
4. See this disc golf disc-throwing robot: