United Kingdom

Energy Systems Network (ESN) and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS), organizers of the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC), unveiled at CES 2021 the official racecar that will be autonomously driven by scores of university teams in the world’s first high-speed, head-to-head autonomous race at the Racing Capital of the World on Oct. 23, 2021.

The pandemic has been a catalyst for service robots. Now Ava Robotics joins the vendors making UV disinfection robots to manage COVID-19-related and other cleaning needs. This robot provides autonomous UV disinfection in workplace settings, including corporate offices, warehouses, and other work spaces.

Combining electronic structure calculations and machine learning (ML) techniques has become a common approach in the atomistic modelling of matter. Using the two techniques together has allowed researchers, for instance, to create models that use atomic coordinates as the only inputs to inexpensively predict any property that can be computed by the first-principles calculations that had been used to train them.

NEC has introduced a facial recognition system that identifies people even when they are wearing masks. The Japanese technology firm had already been working on this system to meet the needs of allergy sufferers who wear masks when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

After three years of development, DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge teams will get the chance to compete in the Final Event being held at the Louisville Mega Cavern in Louisville, Kentucky on September 21-23, 2021.

Diabetes continues to be the leading cause of new cases of blindness among adults in the United States. But the current shortage of eye-care providers would make it impossible to keep up with demand to provide the requisite annual screenings for this population.

Operators of the primary particle accelerator at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility are getting a new tool to help them quickly address issues that can prevent it from running smoothly. A new machine learning system has passed its first two-week test, correctly identifying glitchy accelerator components and the type of glitches they’re experiencing in near-real-time.

Seegrid Corporation, provider of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for material handling, has doubled its revenue year-over-year for the second year in a row. Seegrid’s growth reflects increased demand from manufacturing, e-commerce, and logistics companies for automation solutions to address rising pressures on the supply chain, which were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and ever-evolving consumer demands.

Conversational AI platform Paradox has acquired Spetz.io, an Israeli startup with a chatbot for candidate communications. According to Paradox this lays the foundation an R&D center in EMEA.

AMP Robotics, a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics for the waste industry, has raised $55 million. AMP will use this funding to scale its business operations to meet the market demand for its technology and develop innovative new AI product applications that integrate into materials recovery facilities to increase recycling rates for its customers.