robot

Enigma’s Interactive AI Robots go Online

Posted on by Techtime

photo above: Enigma founders, Jonathan Jacobi (right) and Gal Niv

Enigma, a physical AI company, emerged from stealth phase with a $71 million seed round led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Conviction Partners and leaders from OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, xAI, Cognition, Wiz and others. Founded less than a year ago by Jonathan Jacobi and Gal Niv, Enigma builds AI models to make robots intelligent and effortless to use. The company trains AI models that bring intelligence to any robot, on any hardware, and builds novel user interfaces that make them simple to use.

Enigma has developed more efficient ways to train its foundation models for robotics, lowering the requirements for massive manual data collection while keeping systems reliable in physical environments. The company is building a unified software solution that pairs its models with the ability to adapt them across different robots and settings – removing much of the engineering complexity traditionally required to deploy intelligent robots.

While robots have grown more capable, they remain difficult to use. Enigma advances capability and usability together, developing AI models alongside novel user interfaces and robot-agnostic software that make robots intuitive, on any robot and for any task. The goal is robots that are not just powerful, but natural to use and interact with, for engineers, enterprises, and end users alike. “No matter how capable robots get, if they aren’t intuitive to use, most people never will,” said Jonathan Jacobi, co-Founder and CEO of Enigma.

“AI is moving beyond chatbots and screens”

To answer how to build intuitive interfaces with robots, Enigma is unveiling at www.robots.online a first-of-its-kind experience: 100 real AI-powered robots that anyone can use online, in real time. Using Enigma’s models and interfaces, people will have robots complete tasks and handle physical objects. At this scale, Enigma can learn how people instinctively approach robots – feeding directly back into better models and interfaces. Jacobi: “We believe AI’s next chapter is moving beyond chatbots and screens into systems that can understand, adapt to, and operate in the physical world. Our goal is to make intelligent robots as natural to work with as computers and smartphones are today.”

Enigma was founded 11 months ago by CEO Jonathan Jacobi and Gal Niv. The co-founders met in Israel’s elite Unit 8200, where they even shared a bunk bed. Jacobi started a computer science degree at 13 and finished it in high school, then became the youngest-ever employee at both Microsoft and Check Point at 17. Niv began hardware hacking at 10, joined a cybersecurity startup at 17, completed a four-year degree in a single year, and became the unit’s youngest cyber-operations manager. After years of working together across cybersecurity, scientific research and large-scale systems, they founded Enigma on the belief that physical AI is the next frontier.

Nanovel Unveiled Fruit Harvesting Robot

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Israel-based Nanovel unveiled an AI-powered autonomous fruit-harvesting robot capable of picking tree fruits. It features a telescopic multi-arm platform equipped with advanced vision systems, edge computer and AI software to identify, assess, and selectively pick fruit with precision that meets fresh market quality standards.

Currently, the robot is towed by a tractor. Future versions are planned to include an internal driving unit and autonomous navigation capabilities. In the first phase, the robot is planned to harvest oranges, with later expansion to other types of citrus. The company’s crop roadmap includes lemons, grapefruits, avocados, mangoes, peaches, and nectarines.

The California Citrus Research Board (CRB) has signed a non-dilutive funding agreement with Nanovel, which includes the delivery of a robot after a series of field trials in California, totaling $900,000. The field trials are set to start in the spring of 2025, and will be conducted in cooperation with leading citrus growers.

Nanovel was established in 2018 by the company’s CEO Isaac Mazor, former Founder and CEO of Jordan Valley Semiconductors, which was acquired by Bruker International in 2015. Nanovel will showcase the AI-powered autonomous fruit harvesting robot at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit, which will take place in London between September 30 and October 1.

Israel MoD to test a Combat Robotic Autonomous Vehicle

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The Israel Ministry of Defense will begin testing a robotic unmanned vehicle (photo above) )called M-RCV (Medium Robotic Combat Vehicle), developed by the Ministry’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D), the Tank and APC Directorate, and Israeli security industries. The robotic combat vehicle is presented this week at Elbit Systems’ pavilion at the Eurosatory Defense and Security Exhibition in Paris.

The vehicle includes a new robotic platform type BLR-2 made by BL, a 30 mm autonomous turret developed by the Tank and APC Directorate for the “Eitan” APC, Elbit’s “Iron Fist” Active Protection System, fire control and mission management systems, robotic autonomous kit and situation awareness systems. The vehicle also features a capsuled drone for forward reconnaissance missions, and a passive sensing kit developed by Elbit Systems and Foresight.

The technological demonstrator has the ability to carry heavy and varied mission loads, and a built-in system for transporting and receiving UAVs. The vehicle will also incorporate sights, an IAI missile launcher, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems’ “Spike” missiles. The M-RCV’s capabilities include a highly autonomous solution for forward reconnaissance, and controlled lethality in all-terrain conditions during the day and night in all-weather scenarios.

The system was developed as part of the autonomous battlefield concept led by IMoD, and it is expected to start field tests during 2023 in representative scenarios.

Elbit to lead Human-Robot Interaction Consortium

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Elbit Systems’ C4I and Cyber group was chosen to lead the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) technologies research and development consortium, lately approved by the Israel Innovation Authority. The new consortium includes robotics companies and academic researchers in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, computer science and behavioral sciences. It will develop HRI infrastructures to address the needs of close interaction between robotic systems and human users through natural communications methodologies (verbal & gestures) and according to relevant social codes and robotic platforms level of autonomy.

Today, autonomous robotic platforms (those not continuously controlled by a human operator) operate in a “sterile” human-free environment, such as logistics centers and automated production and assembly lines. Integrating robots in a shared workspace environment with human teams will allow the transfer of routine, dull and burnout-inducing tasks to robots and reduce workloads on human teams, thereby increasing crew productivity and reducing their rotation. Such integration will only be possible when human crews feel confident and able to communicate naturally with robots, operating in their close environment.

Elbit is active in the field of autonomous systems and robotics and provides aerial, land and naval autonomous systems. Last month it made a demonstration for the Royal Netherlands Army, exhibiting the use of heterogeneous autonomous swarms working in cooperation with human teams. During the capability demonstration, different robotic pairings operated as swarms autonomously performing three types of operational missions. The missions included planning, navigating to predefined points, allocating sectors and the performance of various tasks.

Percepto and Boston Dynamics to provide Multi-robot Inspection

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Boston Dynamics and Percepto from Modi’in, Israel, have combined their products into an autonomous monitoring and inspection solution for dangerous and remote industrial sites. Founded in 2014, Percepto has developes the autonomus industrial drone Sparrow, as a drone-in-a-box solution. Sparrow was adopted to monitor some of the world’s leading utility, oil & gas sites, mining and other critical infrastructure facilities.

Lately the company moved to a higher level: It created an Autonomous Inspection & Monitoring (AIM) platform that can manage a fleet of third-party robots alongside Sparrow drone. By installing its own PerceptoCore payload on each drone, the cloud-based AIM provides visual data management and analysis to report trends and anomalies and to alert of risks. When a member of staff request data, Percepto AIM deploys the most suitable robot independently without human accompaniment to retrieve and stream the required data.

Here comes the cooperation with Boston Dynamics: Spot is an agile doglike mobile robot developed by Boston Dynamics that navigates terrain with unprecedented mobility. Percepto has integrated Spot with its AIM for automated inspection rounds completely controlled remotely via the platform. Spot carries Percepto’s PerceptoCore payload, which includes high resolution imaging and thermal vision sensors.

Spot and Sparrow working together at the Dead Sea, Israel
Spot and Sparrow working together at the Dead Sea, Israel

They are able detect issues including hot spots on machines or electrical conductors, water and steam leaks around plants and equipment with degraded performance, with the data relayed via AIM. “Combining Percepto’s Sparrow drone with Spot creates a unique solution for remote inspection,” said Michael Perry, VP at Boston Dynamics.

This week the company also won a financing boost to its vision: A strategic investment of $45 million in Series B funding led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT) to launch its solution for remote, fully autonomous, asset monitoring and inspection. It brings the total investment in the company to $72.5 million.

temi Raised $20 Million for Tablet-based Personal Robot

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temi from Tel-Aviv has completed a $20 Million financial raising round to boost the sales of its unique home robot, mainly in the US and China. With the last round, the 5 years old 100 employees startup had raised a total of $82 million. Among the new investors in the company is the Chinese wellness giant, OGAWA group, who joined the company with $5 million investment. OGAWA’s VP for innovation, Rafi Aviram, told Techtime that this investment will be followed by a strategic cooperation between the two companies.

Temi combines the qualities of modern digital assistants with the mobility of a robot. It follows its user in the house and connects him with friends, smart devices, media and video
communications, by voice and gestures. Temi’s interaction is based on patented ROBOX technology comprised of 16 sensors, object recognition, and face recognition enabling temi to autonomously navigate around the home or office.

The idea came up a few years ago when the founder and CEO Yossi Wolf went to visit his grandmother. Spending an afternoon with her he noticed how shaky her hands were and how difficult it was for her to hold a cup of tea. At that moment, he decided to creat temi for her. Invetment by the Lead Investor and Former CTO of Alibaba – John Wu – who assisted in raising a $60 Million
capital  – was the starting point of the company.

Today temi is a global company with offices in Shenzhen China (production), New York (Marketing&Sales), Tel Aviv (R&D), and Singapore. The first batch of robots just went out lately fom flex factory in China, and the company is focused now mainly on sales and marketing.