Swivl makes personal robots with a video twist, and the company has just raised a $500,000 round from Grishin Robotics.

Grishin is a global investment company (founded by one of the Mail.ru co-founders) that specifically supports personal robotics.

And Swivl — well, think of it as a Roomba for Facetime or YouTube. It swivels (hence the name) to track a speaker and capture video without the need for a dedicated cameraman. It’s designed with iOS devices in mind, but it works with any smartphone or video camera.

Here’s a demo clip showing the Swivl mount unit and tracker in action:

Swivl and its new investors see particular opportunity in the education market. “The global educational industry is undergoing huge transforming changes, and robotics plays an increasingly significant role in that process,” said Grishin founder Dmitry Grishin.

“Swivl represents a rare combination of strong technologies, beautiful design, and affordable price-point — exactly the type of product we are looking for. Swivl is very well positioned for disruptive penetration of mass-market educational technologies, taking online education to a new level by dramatically increasing the amount of published, high-quality video content.”

Swivl is located in San Carlos, Calif., and was founded in 2010.

Image credit: Swivl

IBM is working on a robotics system to drastically reduce the need for physically present engineers in industries like oil, shipping, and even aerospace.

The maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) system is designed to let engineers to work “mobilely” on all kinds of machinery. It uses a combination of virtual reality software and sophisticated robotics hardware.

Here’s a handy video showing how it all comes together:

Basically, the Smart Mobility MRO system enables lesser skilled engineers to roam the land maintaining and repairing equipment. They’re monitored by an offsite, more expert engineer supervisor, who tracks them via GPS.

Then, the onsite engineer uses a smartphone and QR codes to find the right equipment in need of fixin’ as well as instructions on how to fix it. Using virtual reality, the phone can also overlay on a given site the location of another engineer or a first-aid station. It sounds like simple stuff, but when you’re in a huge manufacturing facility for the first (or second, or third) time in your life, simple stuff like this can help the job get done much more efficiently.

The robotics part comes in when the onsite engineer gets stuck and needs help from his more expert offsite supervisor. A robotic arm, equipped with audio and video hardware, provides a direct link from the supervisor to the situation and machinery. The arm also contains a projector, so the supervisor can literally draw out a plan of attack and overlay it on the onsite engineer’s view.

In short, the technology enables companies to have fewer high-skilled engineers out on the road at any given time. They can save costs by hiring junior engineers with the confidence that those folks have constant access to backup when it’s needed.

The Smart Mobility MRO project is the result of a collaboration between IBM and the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), which delves into the many issues and problems in advanced manufacturing.

This post was written by entrepreneur and academic Vivek Wadhwa.

Companies all over the world are becoming increasingly worried about their ability to innovate and compete in the fast-changing technology world. That’s according to GE’s third annual “Global Innovation Barometer” released Jan 17.

The survey of 3,100 senior business executives in 25 countries showed the anxiety that these executives feel about innovation and how confused they are about global competitiveness. One in three said the increased competition and accelerated pace of technological advancement is having a negative impact on their local economy. And while 71 percent said they favor the opening of their markets to foreign trade, investment, and technology imports, an equal percentage want protectionist government procurement policies that favor domestic technological development. There was a 53 percent overlap in the people who expressed these two opposing views. Executives from the U.S. were only a little less divided than Indian executives on this issue.

Business executives agree on some things. They agree, for example, that they need to better understand customers and anticipate market evolutions, attract and retain innovative people, and stay ahead of the technology curve.

It’s clear to me from the GE study that companies may have become more fearful of the future. They are really confused about what lies ahead and what they and governments should do.

It has been said countless times, but it still bears repeating: Technologies are advancing at exponential rates in fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), computing, synthetic biology, 3D printing, medicine, and nanomaterials. These advances are making it possible for small startups to take on the largest corporations in the world by developing technologies that make established products obsolete. Combinations of exponential technologies can, as I’ve written before, threaten entire industries — as robotics, AI, and 3D printing promise to do to China’s manufacturing industry, as cheap tablet computers will do to the personal computer industry, and as advances in sensors and genomics will do to the medical devices and pharmaceutical industry.

The “disruptive innovation” that Harvard professor Clayton Christensen has long talked about is happening at an ever-increasing pace. Changes that would take many decades in the past are now happening in a fraction of this time. Witness the evolution of mobile telephones and the changes that these have caused to our work habits and family connections. This has had an even greater impact on hundreds of millions of families in the developing world who were cut off from each when they went to cities to work. Over a 10-year period, the number of cellular subscriptions increased from a few million to almost 6 billion — or 87 percent of the world’s population.

Changes in technology are already toppling giants. Look at what happened to digital camera pioneer Kodak. The company went from being a powerhouse in the photography industry to a laggard. Even though a Kodak engineer invented the digital camera in 1975, the company couldn’t adapt its business model fast enough to take advantage of the technology. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in January 2012. This will be the fate of many of today’s leading companies if they don’t leverage the advancing technologies and evolve their ways of doing business.

They don’t have as much time as they might think.

On a call to discuss the findings of the GE research, I asked the company’s marketing chief, Beth Comstock, why companies don’t have a greater sense of realization about what lies ahead — about the impact exponential technologies will have on their businesses. Comstock agreed that technology change should be a real cause of concern and said, “Perhaps some of the fear that’s coming through is the recognition that it is happening at a faster pace than many of us can comprehend.” She noted that countries such as Saudi Arabia, aware they will run out of resources one day, are spending the most on innovation, and that Israel is “trying to run a different play” — as a “startup nation.”

Every big company that wants to be in business at the end of the decade needs to “run a different play,” as Comstock put it, and they need to disrupt themselves before some startups — coming out of nowhere — do. Instead of trying to raise protectionist barriers, large companies need to build the same types of innovative products and services that the startups would.

Vivek Wadhwa is a fellow at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University and is affiliated with several other universities. Read more about Vivek Wadhwa’s affiliations. You can also follow him on Twitter — @wadhwa.

[Editor's note: This story previously appeared on WashingtonPost.com]

However, this nightmare is now a reality.

The team at the University of California at San Diego’s Machine Perception Lab just posted a video (embedded below) of DIEGO-SAN, a rather disturbing looking robot that it designed to replicate a 1-year-old baby.

The Machine Perception Lab conducts development of systems that simulate natural human facial expressions. The team worked with Hanson Robotics to create the face and Japanese robotics company Kokoro to build the body. The result? A rather alarming creature with a face that looks like a cross between a russet potato and a spawn of Satan, and a body straight out The Terminator.

The National Science Foundation funded this project in an effort to advance research in cognitive artificial intelligence and human-robot interaction. Basically, the goal is to imbue robots with emotional capabilities, although Diego gives me the chills rather than the warm fuzzies. He has high-definition cameras in his eyes and can react to his environment like a real, human, nonterrifying baby would.

“As much a work of art as technology and science, this represents a step forward in the development of emotionally relevant roboticsm,” said Hanson Robotics founder David Hanson.

The vision behind this project is to achieve greater understanding of infant cognitive development. Dr. Javier Movellan founded the Machine Perception Lab in 1997 to advance study of the brain by creating “machine perception primates” that can interact with humans in natural conditions. He worked with children and robots as part of the MP Lab’s rubi project, which analyzed how toddlers behaved when social robots were a part of their daily environment.

“Its main goal is to try and understand the development of sensory motor intelligence from a computational point of view,” Dr. Javier Movellan said, as reported by Gizmag. “It brings together researchers in developmental psychology, machine learning, neuroscience, computer vision and robotics. Basically we are trying to understand the computational problems that a baby’s brain faces when learning to move its own body and use it to interact with the physical and social worlds.”

Diego has been gestating (it’s OK, I am cringing too) for years and has at last made its film debut. The MP Lab also worked with Hanson Robotics to create an Albert Einstein robot which sports a Stormtrooper-like outfit below an eccentric tuft of white hair.

As much as I fear childbirth, it seems less frightening than spending an hour with either of these brilliant, yet disturbing, creations.

Photos courtesy of Gizmag.com

“Three locations have been found which have skylights on the order of 100 meters across,” says Astrobotic Technology Inc.’s President John Thornton.”It’s a good parallel to where humans settled on earth. They chose caves because they provided shelter and protection.”

Astrobotic’s mission is to provide cost-effective landers and roving robots for planetary missions.”The Moon is a first step in human beings learning to live off beyond the Earth,” Thornton continues. “It’s very important to the future of mankind to expand beyond our home planet: to satisfy our innate curiosity, for exploration and potentially for survival should we damage this Earth beyond repair.”

To survive on another planet, we would need a reliable water supply, food, basic manufacturing facilities like 3D printers to make spare parts or new machines, and robots for exploration and transport. In October 2015, Astrobotic will send a lander and rover to the Moon to search for the most basic of those requirements: water.

Water is an almost magical chemical whose components can be used to make everything from air for breathing to rocket fuel. Procuring water and making fuel locally could dramatically cut the cost of planetary exploration, since currently all resources are carried from Earth at a cost of million of dollars per kilo.

Astrobotic’s Polaris Rover

Astrobotic’s robot rover Polaris will hitch a ride on a Falcon 9 rocket launched by SpaceX. After landing, it will prospect for polar ice and determine how to harvest it. The rover has three vertical solar panels to generate 250W of power, stereo cameras and laser to generate 3-D video and models of the surface and for navigation. Polaris can drive and avoid obstacles autonomously. 

The polar mission is also an attempt to win Google’s Lunar X prize, a $20 million reward for the first privately-funded robot to land on the surface of the Moon, drive 500 meters and send video and images back to Earth. There are bonus prizes for other robotic feats like driving 5 km or surviving 14 frigid lunar nights (at liquid nitrogen temperatures) intact. While most X-prize entries are small-scale, Astrobotic will bring 100kg of payload to the Moon and the company sees it as just a first step in lunar colonization and commercialization.NASA cancelled its manned lunar space program last year so future manned lunar exploration is now the domain of private industry. 

The first lunar industry may be mining. “The Moon could be a potentially huge source of a lot of exotic materials,” Thornton explained. “It has platinum. It has Helium-3, a third generation, nuclear fusion fuel which creates no radiation as a byproduct. It comes from solar wind and doesn’t occur naturally on Earth.”

To mine, you need permanent settlements suitable for human beings. That’s where the caves come in. Robots could prepare landing sites, find new caves, map the cave network, construct infrastructure for returning to those caves and finally create habitats for humans. “Most of the technology is there,” said Thornton. “There are some issues we are focusing on like precision landing with an accuracy of 10s of meters. That’s important when you want to return to same place. There will be a new type of robot to descend down into the cave the first time and then set up the infrastructure to access it regularly.”

Astrobotic’s first customers are, however, the space agencies themselves. The company is developing robotic equipment for NASA and will haul payload from space agencies and scientific institutions to the Moon. Later, space agencies may even buy tickets for their astronauts. Thornton claims that the role of the commercial sector is to take established space technology and put it into an affordable form, while government agencies should continue to push the boundaries.

It’s not all about the money though, even for commercial space companies. “One of the most important things about space exploration is exciting a new generation about space,” Thorton muses. “It’s been 40 years since Apollo landed on the surface of the Moon. How many young people were inspired at that time to become scientists or engineers or the next astronaut? We have lost a bit of that. If we can revive interest in the Moon it’s a first step towards reinvigorating the next generation and that’s important to the future of all of us.”

The ReWalk suit was designed by Israeli electrical engineer Dr Remit Gopher, who became a quadriplegic following an accident in 1997. Gopher devoted 10 years to developing a device which would allow a paraplegic to walk again. Such devices, like metal frames with springs, have been around for at least 50 years but required an enormous effort from the user. 

“It was extremely tiring for an individual to take 10 or 15 steps. A key element of the ReWalk design was that the energy requirements of the user should be no different from that of someone who was not injured,” says Argo Medical Technologies (the company which makes the ReWalk) CEO Larry Jasinski.

Gopher developed a robotic exoskeleton which attaches to the user’s legs and waist and can bear the weight of both the user and the device itself. The suit is controlled via shifts in the user’s center of gravity, somewhat like riding a Segway. The suit’s motion sensor can detect a very small movement of say 4 degrees and send a signal to the bionic legs to begin to move. A backpack carries the suit’s battery and software.

Patients need training to learn how to use the suit (an average of 15 sessions) but some have been able to walk unaided in the third session. The ReWalk is used with crutches purely for balance. The suit’s software includes safety features which detect if the user is about to fall.  

The ReWalk doesn’t just allow users to walk again but may have a remarkable effect on their overall health. “How many of us are told by doctors to get off the couch? The health challenges for someone with a spinal chord injury are immense,” says Jasinski.

Purely because they spend their time in a wheelchair, paraplegics experience depleted bone density, rising body fat, diabetes, declining cardiovascular fitness, severe bowel problems and pain. Argo Medical technologies is involved in two clinical studies on the effect of the ReWalk suit on patient’s general health. “We are evaluating what you do to the overall metabolism of a person when you let them walk again. Our patients are almost universally showing reduced body fat, increased lean tissue and improved cardiovascular function.” 

The ReWalk is currently available in Europe and costs 52,500 EUR. “We believe that we will have patients walking around the streets of the US in the second half of 2013 (pending FDA approval),” says Jasinski. The price stateside is expected to be around $65,000. ReWalks are already in use in 22 rehabilitation centres across the U.S.

The pricetag may be steep but Jasinski told me that the overall cost of care for ReWalk users drops considerably. “We believe that the health impact will more than pay for the cost of this device.” Around 100 Europeans currently have a ReWalk for personal use. 

The company is developing a product for quadriplegics (patients who also cannot use their arms) which is similar to the current suit but will have crutches integrated into the system and is looking at many other medical applications where people cannot walk because of a stroke, Multiple Sclerosis or Cerebral Palsy. Users like John (featured in the video above) are, however, still waiting for the “dance mode”. 

RobotAppStore is the first robot app marketplace. The store supplies apps for consumer robots like iRobot’s Roomba vacuum cleaner, InnvoLab’s pet dinasour Pleo or Sony’s Aibo robot dog. The infographic below shows the full range of robots and the types of apps supported.The apps range from a new personality for your Aibo to songs for Pleo to perform. Many of the apps are free but developers receive 70 percent of earnings. The site also provides a knowledge base and programming manuals covering core robots programming topics and access to experts in particular robot models.

Software may be the next frontier for robotics. Traditionally, robots used proprietary operating systems and software but efforts like Willow Garage’s open source ROS (Robot Operating System) are helping to build an infrastructure of libraries for robot capabilities like navigation or vision recognition. The app store is somewhat different since, like mobile apps for the iPhone or Android, the applications need to be developed for a particular model. Extending the functions of robots via apps is a similar approach to that being taken to the Internet of Things by startups like SmartThings.

Grishin Robotics is the brainchild of Dimitry Grishin, CEO of Mail.ru, a Russian email and social media portal worth around $7 billion. His Mail.ru co-founder Yuri Milner runs headline-grabbing investment firm DST, whose investments include Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon.

The RobotAppStore is Grishin Robotic’s second investment after Double Robotics, whose slinky telepresence robots seem designed to glide soundlessly around a chic interior. Grishin Robotics will make investments of between several hundred thousand dollars and several million from its $25 million fund. Funding is one of the biggest problems for robot startups. Hardware requires a bigger upfront investment than software, and Venture Capital is still reluctant to make bets on risky hardware projects.

When I interviewed Grishin a few months ago he talked about how he wanted to bring Internet startup culture to the robot world. “Roboticists spend years and years on research. Then years on a prototype. They need to do quicker iterations and get feedback from users. Without user feedback, you can’t create a good product.” Adding apps seems a logical step in that direction.

Of course no driving app is required for a cat to hitch a ride on your Roomba.

Bot&Dolly bought three second-hand industrial robots back in 2008. “I had been wondering for years why people weren’t using them to move cameras around,” says Linnell. He ran a small advertising and video production company in San Francisco and had spent his career doing motion graphics and animation. “The first robot found its way into a Louis Vuitton TV commercial a week later.”

Some time later, Linnell got a call from a major Hollywood studio who were shooting a new movie. “It has a lot of impossible shots which you would not be able to do with traditional wire work and is massively ambitious technically,” explains Linnell. It took a year and a half to write a new control system for the robots which could be used on the set.

Bot & Dolly Reel from Bot & Dolly on Vimeo.

Robots were used in film-making as far back as Star Wars but they were always custom-built and required proprietary software and a highly-specialised operator. In the 1980s the computer conquered Hollywood and movies went digital. Bot&Dolly’s founders felt that everything that could be done on a computer had already been done and that it was time to get film-makers back into the real world. So they took Autodesk’s Maya animation software (the industry standard) and wrote tools to allow non-roboticists like animators to run robots.

“Animators were flying cameras around in the virtual world doing Avatar or whatever but they never had the power to be film-makers,” says Linnell. “Now the same animators can move a camera around, or an actor or a prop. Anyone from Pixar can pick up the tool that they use every day, hit an export button and animate a robot.” Bot&Dolly’s software system controls some standard robots like Scout and Iris which weigh from 6 up to 500 kilograms but users can also control their own robots by adding a new model to the software.

Robots can achieve a level of precision, speed and coordination of movement which cannot be matched by humans. “If you want to move a coffee cup six inches across a table at two meters per second and have it stop on a dime, we want to give you a tool to do that without hiring a developer.” Lights, props, explosions, special effects and even the positions of the actors, can be synchronised to the millisecond and coordinated with sound and playback.

Industrial robots don’t usually work in such close proximity with people so safety was a critical issue, especially when those people are expensive movie stars. The system contains checks and safeguards to ensure the robots are on the programmed flight path and uses laser tripwires, pressure mats and other technology to keep track of the humans. High-risk shots are rehearsed at various speeds, building up to real-time.

Bot&Dolly’s robots have also developed showbiz careers of their own. They have appeared in advertisments for Google and star in a Las Vegas show where they act and play music with the Blue Man group. “People are pretty fascinated by large robots,” muses Linnell. “When they move in a highly coordinated way where all the axes are moving at the same time, the movement is incredibly organic and snake-like. It’s a bit disconcerting and amazing even to myself having watched these things for years now. In a theatrical production, we are trying to give them a sense of character, purposely making them sad or proud or scared. You can convey emotion quite easily.”

George Clooney had better watch out. The next generation of stars may be built, not born.

So Revolve built Kubi, a robot that swivels and tilts … but stays put wherever you place it.

“The whole moving avatar thing is pretty cool,” CEO Marcus Rosenthal admits. “But, not only is it a bit creepy — with people driving up behind you and looking over your shoulder — it’s pretty expensive.”

In fact, Rosenthal says, 80 percent of the value of a telepresence robot is in a specific room, not in moving around. And 90 percent of the cost is the ability to move. Sold on those two premises, the Revolve team built a, yes, revolving robot that neither walks nor rolls.

Simply attach your iPad to the Kubi base, and you’ve got instant telepresence capability.

I’ve seen a lot of these lately. Double Robotics has built a very elegant, beautiful system retailing in the $2,000-2,500 range. Suitable Technologies has built a Lamborghini that looks like a Chevette, selling for a considerably higher $16,000.

Kubi, on the other hand, will retail for $250, with introductory pricing at $199. (Of course, you will need an iPad.)

Which means, Rosenthal is at pains to emphasize, that a company can buy 10 Kubis for the price of one Double. Or 80 for the price a single Suitable Technologies robot. That’s significant, and it also means that people can buy Kubis for their homes.

“This is affordable for the consumer,” Rosenthal says. “You can bring it into your home – families with young children can use it to meet the grandparents. And it’s also very effective in a business meeting.”

To use Kubi, you download an iOS app — yes, Android is coming — and connect with a Kubi. Once authenticated, you can tilt, zoom, swivel … you’re in charge. That’s critical to the user experience, Rosenthal says. Alternatively, Kubi will allow login directly from the web — no mobile device required.

Revolve Robotics is largely self-funded, plus the team has $50,000 from Lemnos Labs,  hardware startup accelerator. The team is also planning to run an IndieGoGo campaign to raise more funds without diluting their ownership.

It’s a cool and cheap piece of hardware.

My question is whether users might not just go with the cute — and moveable — Romo personal robot, which is even cheaper, at $150, and only requires an old iPhone or iPod Touch, rather than an iPad.

Dean Kamen refers to himself as a “mascot” for technology. The founder of Deka Research and well-known inventor has more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents. He created the insulin pump and the portable dialysis machine, and the Segway scooter. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005 and won the National Medal of Technology in 2000.

But wherever he goes (like the Semiconductor Industry Association dinner in San Jose, Calif., last night), he always talks about the educational sports foundation he created, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST). The group makes a sport out of getting kids to embrace technology and science. They do so by competing across the country with other kids who build robots, like the basketball-shooting robot (pictured) from Cupertino’s Monta Vista Robotics Team.

In a keynote speech before a thousand chip industry executives, Kamen said he came up with the idea for FIRST out of frustration in 1989. He looked around at American society and was frustrated at how a whole generation of kids were growing up with warped perceptions, shaped by mass media, that made kids obsessed with professional sports athletes and Hollywood stars. And smart kids were branded as socially inept nerds.

“I looked at a culture that seemed to be going astray,” he said. “You can’t find a kid today who can tell you who won the Nobel prize in medicine. We don’t have an education problem. We have a culture problem.”

Kamen liked sports, but as a pastime, not an obsession. America came of age with great inventors like Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers, but, he said, “It didn’t seem like that was the core of the culture anymore.”

Instead of fighting it, Kamen embraced the idea of using competitive sports to get kids to realize that science and engineering could be fun. He shrugged off concerns that it might put too much pressure on kids. He started FIRST, and got the first competition going in 1992.

“Maybe you should stop keeping score in basketball because there is too much pressure,” he said. “how about developing the muscle hanging between your ears? We needed a culture that celebrated this stuff.”

Kamen created a robot-building kit and distributed it to 28 teams. They competed at a gym in a high school in Manchester, New Hampshire. Now, FIRST has reached more than 250,000 young people. Last year’s competition was held in the huge Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Mo.

My own daughter competed on a FIRST LEGO League team during elementary school, building LEGO robots that carried out a bunch of tasks over the course of two minutes. The Cupertino team’s robot (pictured above) was able to collect basketballs and shoot them through a hoop.

“Kids build self-confidence and self-respect,” Kamen said. “It was astounding.”

Kamen said that every sitting president since the first George Bush has welcomed the FIRST champions at the White House. The elder Bush showed up at one event and said, “Wow, this is like WWF (the World Wrestling Federation). With smart people.” More than 120,000 volunteers make the FIRST happen, and the FIRST scholarship program hands out more than $16 million in college scholarships.

The Ford Foundation did a study on FIRST’s results. It found that 50 percent of those who participated were more likely to attend college than the norm. They were three times more likely to major in science or engineering. Female participants were four times more like to choose a career in science or engineering.

And now professional sports athletes and Hollywood stars like the Black Eyed Peas are promoting FIRST. Speaking to the chip executives, who are sorely in need of engineers and are bemoaning the state of education in the U.S., he said, “In your own enlightened self-interest, get involved.”

Rich Templeton (pictured), chairman and chief executive of Texas Instruments, won the chip industry’s highest award tonight for his career in business and his advocacy for improving education. And his advice to the rest of us was to take the time to boil frogs.

OK, he didn’t mean that literally, but we’ll get to that. Templeton was honored at the 35th annual Semiconductor Industry Association  dinner in San Jose, Calif., where he received the Robert N. Noyce award, named after the co-founder of Intel. He has been a tireless advocate for making the U.S. more competitive in technology and improving its education.

In his acceptance speech, Templeton thanked his father, who worked at IBM, for introducing him to technology.

“The technology, chemistry, and part numbers have changed, but the work it takes to do it hasn’t,” he said. “It takes great, skilled people to make these things” that are the foundation of the $150 billion semiconductor industry.

Templeton started working in the chip industry in 1980, when the Japanese came on the scene and threatened to take over the business, due in no small part to the anti-competitive practice of excluding U.S. companies from its own market and selling chips below cost to drive others out of business. Templeton watched as the U.S. industry’s founders gathered together and built the SIA as a lobbying group, putting pressure on Washington to make the Japanese play fair.

Templeton rose through the ranks and became a leader of Dallas-based chip maker TI, attending SIA meetings where Intel’s then-CEO Craig Barrett and arch rival Jerry Sanders, then-CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, would come together to deal with a common threat.

“These great characters would hang their guns at the door, but they brought their knives in,” Templeton said.

The U.S. instituted fair trade policies, dealt with the imminent Japanese threat, and, thanks to the rise of Intel in particular, U.S. chip companies still have more than 50 percent of the worldwide semiconductor market, which is the foundation for the $1 trillion chip industry.

“I don’t think the open trade battles are over,” Templeton said. “We have a few more of those, with the rise of China.”

The industry pulled together and dealt with the common threat in a state of crisis and saved technology in the U.S., Templeton said. But now it faces a similar crisis, self-imposed, with the decline of education. he noted that 40 percent of high schools in the U.S. don’t offer physics classes. That’s a formula for technological decline. Education is a long-term crisis, but a crisis nevertheless.

“It’s like boiling a frog, it’s happening slowly,” Templeton said.

He didn’t quite finish that comparison. But it means that when you put a frog in boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put it in warm water and slowly turn up the heat, it won’t jump out. That’s what’s happening to us with the slow decline of education. If you’re trying to do something about education, he said to the people in the room, “thank you for what you are doing. Consider doing more.”

Templeton said he was reminded of the quote, “When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near.” As he travels around the world, he is encouraged that the “dreams I see are far greater” than his memories. He is amazed there are 5 billion people using cellular phones.

“With nanotechnology materials, I see another 50 years of breakthroughs,” he said. “It is fun to look at the dreams that these young people still have.”

After the dinner, I asked Templeton if he really boiled frogs. “No,” he replied.

Robots are on their way into your workplace, but you may not be there to complain about it.

“Many of us will live to see the day where we have physical, non-human colleagues,” says Matt Beane, a researcher at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Beane’s research addresses what he calls “The Avatar Economy”, where remote workers operate robots. Such robots are already used for tasks which require highly skilled labour and physical presence but where it’s either too dangerous or extremely expensive to use human beings. Aerial and ground-based robots were used in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, for example, to help assess system and structural integrity and evaluate demolition plans. 

According to Beane, the next wave of robotic workers will be in retail, security and remote supervision of manufacturing operations. Telepresence robots like those made by DoubleRobotics (and their human operators) will help you to find the right TV in a retail store or allow an operations supervisor in Chicago to do quality control on an assembly line in Shanghai. 

But robots are just one small slice of our automated future. Google’s driverless car depends on the company’s massive sensing, mapping and data sorting network. Technologies like Big Data, the Internet of Things, Speech Recognition and Machine Learning will make robots smarter but that’s the least of their applications. “Robots will not be a discrete element of the change in the economy, but rather the physically extensible part of this ever-expanding bubble of underlying technology.”

“The next frontier for automation is non-routine work,” explains Beane. “Some of the biggest changes in work could be at the high end. These jobs can be automated without a physical avatar.” So while taxi drivers and farm workers can be replaced by robots operated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) or a human operator, it’s still expensive to manufacture that hardware. “Most automation will be intangible. It’s progressing very rapidly and is much less expensive than physical production. Once you have got good AI, it’s replicable at almost zero cost.” That, gentle reader, means you. Replacing lawyers or software developers or technology journalists with AI could result in the ultimate scalable business. 

These developments raise some rather uncomfortable questions for non-extensible human beings. “Who am I if this robot can do my job?” says Beane. He points to surgeons as an example of highly skilled workers who already work with robots and will face this dilemma. “This is one of the most narcissistic, ego-driven working cultures you can imagine and many of us owe our lives to that culture. Being decisive in the face of imminent death or disability takes an almost inhuman amount of confidence and skill,” he elaborates.

A surgeon’s whole identity is based on incredibly high status, skill and autonomy relative to other professions. “Yet when they use a Da Vinci surgical robot, if they stray outside the surgical field, the robot can be programmed to resist. They get force feedback on the manipulators. Even the best surgeon in the world can be told by the robot, multiple times during an operation ‘You shouldn’t be doing that.’”

So is all automation bad for humans? Beane has studied hospitals using Aethon’s Tug robots, which move supplies around the building. No jobs were lost. In hospital pharmacies Tugs were used to deliver drugs. “Pharmacy technicians spend two to four years in schooling and certification but they were spending eighty percent of their time ferrying drugs around. Now the technicians are doing the things they were trained to do and have much higher job satisfaction.”

In general though, if automation significantly reduces the amount of work there is to go around, this could lead to fundamental structural problems in the economy such as higher concentration of wealth, greater inequality, fewer high-paying jobs and lower consumer spending. “We may automate ourselves into a recession,” concludes Beane. 

Leading artificial intelligence experts are investigating ways to commercialize a rapidly emerging sub-field of research known as “deep learning.” This month, a research team under renowned scientist Geoffrey E. Hinton’s tutelage won a prize sponsored by Merck to design software to uncover molecules that are most likely to be good candidates for new drugs.

The win was a particularly impressive feat given that the team entered at the last minute and was working with relatively small data-sets. Click here to read more about “how they did it.”

In a story originally reported by the New York Times, even skeptical scientists admit this is a significant advancement. “The kind of jump we are seeing in the accuracy of these systems is very rare indeed,” NYU computer scientist Yann leCun told the Times.

Silicon Valley’s technology companies have used artificial intelligence technology for several years. Deep learning is yielding new discoveries in fields like speech recognition and computer vision. It is already used in Apple’s Siri virtual personal assistant and Google Street View.

This is just the beginning. Today’s image recognition systems do not use human-familiar concepts like ‘mouth, or ‘eyes’ but statistical properties derived from the image. Deep learning is based on learning several levels of representations, and higher-level concepts are defined from lower-level ones.

“The innovation of deep learning is that it not only arranges these properties into hierarchies, but it works out how many levels of hierarchy best fit the data,” wrote Tom Stafford and Matt Webb, neuroscience researchers from Mind Hacks.

Recently, deep learning systems have been able to outperform humans. A team at the Swiss AI Lab at the University of Lugano won a pattern recognition test to identify images in a database of traffic signs against a human expert.

In the future, science writer John Markoff posits, deep learning will make surveillance technologies cheaper and more accessible, help marketers comb through data to identify consumer buying patterns, and may also pave the way for self-driving cars and robots that can replace human workers.

Machine Image via Shutterstock

Wired editor Chris Anderson is leaving the magazine after 11 years as its editor-in-chief to run a robotics company he founded, 3D Robotics.

Anderson made the announcement at an all-hands meeting for Wired staffers in San Francisco today.

3D Robotics has a Facebook page, Twitter account, and domain name (3drobotics.com), but currently no website. Currently, that URL redirects to DIY Drones, another company Anderson founded, which sells kits and parts for people making their own unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — robotic aircraft, essentially. It appears that 3D Robotics is an outgrowth of that company.

In addition to running Wired and turning it from a niche magazine with insider geek appeal into a mainstream tech-culture powerhouse, Anderson also wrote several influential books, including The Long Tail and Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Most recently, he published Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, which covers the rise of 3D printers, industrial outsourcing, and the maker movement. He also somehow found the time to become one of the pioneers of do-it-yourself UAV construction and design, and maintained a vigorous speaking schedule.

Anderson, who studied physics as an undergraduate and worked for Science magazine and the Economist before Wired, has an unusually quantitative approach to magazine journalism. For instance, feature story meetings at Wired include votes by every senior magazine editor on each story pitch. The meeting includes a discussion of the average votes each one receives as well as the standard deviation of the votes. However, Anderson, who has a quick and well-informed mind and a firm managerial style, usually has the final say.

The new company is a robot manufacturing company with factories in San Diego, California and Bangkok, Thailand. As of 2010 he was planning to expand into Tijuana, Mexico, according to a video interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. Last year, he posted a photo gallery of the San Diego factory.

Anderson said 3D Robotics was successful and needed more energy, but he sounded very sad and his voice was cracking when he said that he loves Wired, according to a source.

He’ll remain at the helm of Wired until the parent company, Conde Nast, is able to find a new editor-in-chief.

Disclosure: I worked at Wired.com from 2007 to 2011. At the time, Wired’s website was a separate division from the magazine, so I never worked under Anderson, though I know him.

Photo credit: Christina Bonnington

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Grishin is the CEO of Mail.ru, a Russian email and social media portal worth around $7 billion. His Mail.ru co-founder Yuri Milner runs headline-grabbing investment firm DST, whose investments include Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon and who offers $150,000 to every new startup from incubator Y Combinator.

Robotics is still a niche field, dominated by academic research and expensive humanoid showpieces. According to Grishin, that’s about to change. “Robots will become mass-market products. Where we are with robotics now is where personal computers were in the early 1980s.” 

Robots sense, move, consume energy, and often need some basic intelligence. They are complex creatures consisting of sensors, motors, control software, manipulators like robot arms, and a power supply. Due to the cost, hardware innovation has traditionally taken place in large companies. Venture capital is still reluctant to make bets on risky hardware projects. So for robotics startups, the biggest problem is often cash and not technology. However, the cost of components is dropping, and open-source robotics software like Willow Garage’s ROS is making robots more cost-effective. That’s where Grishin comes in.

Grishin Robotics will make investments of between several hundred thousand dollars and several million from its $25 million fund. Grishin’s first investment is Double Robotics, whose slinky telepresence robots seem tailor-made to glide soundlessly around a chic interior. It’s exactly the type of product Grishin is looking for. “It’s very important to bring design into the culture of robotics. Focus on simple problems. If you build a product which costs several thousand dollars, you are done. You have to make it cheaply enough to make it accessible to a mass market,” he said. Hardware startups do have one big advantage over software; people still pay for physical products.

Grishin also wants to bring Internet startup culture to the robot world. “Roboticists spend years and years on research. Then years on a prototype. They need to do quicker iterations and get feedback from users. Without user feedback, you can’t create a good product.”

Robots have toiled for years in manufacturing, medical applications, and the military. Beyond a few outliers like iRobot’s Roomba, few have stepped out of those silos and into our daily lives. To become consumer products they need to operate in the messy world of human beings and not the sterile and structured environment of the factory floor. Our relationship with technology is also a social one, especially once that technology starts to look life-like. MIT’s adorable cardboard robot is an excellent illustration of the future social life of robots.

Education and entertainment are the first sectors Grishin Robotics is targeting, but the fund is open to proposals from all areas of robotics, and from all geographies. Grishin is particularly passionate about robots in education. “Robotics require electronics, programming, hardware. So if students learn robotics, they are learning most of the important skills they need for the future job market.” 

Whether they will be recycling waste, harvesting crops, helping the wheelchair-bound to walk, or watching over the elderly, the robots are coming.

Romotive, the “smartphone robot company” that is part of Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh’s downtown Las Vegas revitalization project, just launched its third-generation robot with — you guessed it — yet another KickStarter campaign.

This little guy is seriously cute. Check out the team’s video here:

Romo is controlled by an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch — or a modern web browser — and uses an iPod Touch or iPhone 4 or 4S as its brain and face. It has two-way audio and video, so could be used as an inexpensive telepresence unit as well — it retails for $150, and Kickstarter backers can reserve one by backing the project.

“Romo’s pretty amazing,” Hsieh says in the video. “It smiles at you, he’s happy to see you … it seems like it has a personality of its own.”

Source: Romotics

The third-generation Romo

The little personal robot can be used for spying, as the original Kickstarter campaign jokingly suggested, or telepresence, or even for mix-reality racing games. Little suggestion: don’t put your latest phone in Romo when you’re racing him.

In addition, there will be an API available so that hackers can create their own cool uses of the little robot.

As his creators said about the original robot, “Since Romo is a “true” robot, he’s infinitely programmable, and can be made to do just about anything.”

The new Romo is bigger, stronger, and faster, and will, if the Kickstarter campaign succeeds, add remote 2-way telepresence, computer vision, autonomous navigation, and facial recognition.

That would make one mighty capable mighty mite.

The robot lets you be present at a meeting, class, museum or other venue without having to be there physically. Your face appears appears on the robot’s iPad screen, and you’re able to move around and see and talk through that screen.

If Grishin Robotics sounds familiar, that’s because it recently launched a $25 million fund for investment in robotics, and was started by Dmitry Grishin, the co-founder and chairman of Mail.ru, the largest Internet company in Russia.

Grishin praised Double, saying in a statement that “the team has a very good approach to design and is keen to build very user-friendly products — things which should not be underestimated while developing next-generation personal robotics companies.”

VentureBeat interviewed Double Robotics’ co-founder David Cann about the news.

VentureBeat: You’ve maxxed out the current production run. When will the next one start?

Cann: The first production run will ship in December. We are already taking pre-orders for the next run, which will ship in early 2013, and we’ll continue scaling production as more orders come in.

Source: Double Robotics

Saying “hi” to Double

VentureBeat: You’re manufacturing in the U.S., correct? Talk to me about why, and how that’s working.

Cann: Yeah, we have almost all of the custom parts made by manufacturers around the US. This is primarily to ramp up production very quickly and have greater reliability and faster shipping. We’re assembling and calibrating the robots in our facility in Silicon Valley for now. After we optimize the manufacturing process, we may contract assembly to a third-party manufacturer.

VentureBeat: Now you’ve validated that there is a market. What do you expect to be able to bring the price down to when you start full-time production?

Source: Double Robotics

A double-double, with no Tim Hortons in sight

Cann: We strive to continuously lower our costs and lower prices, but we don’t yet know when or how much we can reduce costs, so we can’t announce anything today. [Editor's note: The robots currently cost $1,999.]

VentureBeat: Who do you see as your toughest competition?

Cann: There are several other telepresence robots, such as Vgo, Texai, iRobot/InTouch, and AnyBots, but they’re all targeting higher priced and/or niche markets. Double is targeted at a very wide audience and is priced as such. There aren’t any competitors who have matched Double’s price, features, and beauty.

VentureBeat: Talk about design … it’s obviously critically important to you. What were some of the factors that influenced your design?

Cann: Our goal with the design process is to make the technology disappear so the user can focus on the conversation. We tried to simplify the visual sections and shapes. This method also applies to the internal mechanical sub-systems. Every major part in the base serves at least two purposes. For us, design is not simply a phase of the product development, it is the responsibility of every engineer working on each part throughout the entire product life cycle.

VentureBeat: Now you’ve got some serious capital. First priorities?

Cann: Our first priority is to fill the pre-orders from our earliest supporters with a high-quality product. We’re hiring more engineers and software developers over the next few months. We’ll be talking to customers to learn about how they’re using Double and which markets are best served by our product.

In a word, sexy.

A Y Combinator startup, DoubleRobotics’ debut product is Double: basically a cylinder and a stick. Just like a Segway, Double balances on its wheels. Unlike a Segway, however, an iPad rides Double, not you. You control it from your own iPad … wherever you happen to be, you see what it sees, and anyone who sees Double, sees you.

Take a look:

The robot, if you can call it that, is only 15 pounds. It adjusts height so you can communicate naturally at either standing or sitting height, and moves forward, backward, and turns as you control it from your own iPad or iPhone at a remote location. When not in use, two kickstands ease down from the cylinder between wheels, allowing Double to conserve power and wait for the next rider.

If you’re shocked that hardware this polished and sophisticated could be created on a typical Y Combinator budget of $20,00-40,000, join the club. But while the company has not received any other funding, and the Y Combinator money has helped, co-founder Marc DeVidts told me that there’s been other sources of income.

“We’ve been working for about a year,” DeVidts said. “DoubleRobotics was bootstrapped from the beginning by building custom robots for Fortune 500 companies.”

The Double will be built in the USA: assembled in Miami, with components fabricated all over the U.S. in various factories. The cost is $2,500, but it can be pre-ordered for $2,000 today.

Image credit: DoubleRobotics

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The company produces products such as “MamaRoo,” a calming baby rocker that is basically a multifunction massage chair with five different rocking motions and a built-in iPod dock with speakers.

Source: 4moms

Not made by NASA, not a prop in a SF movie

Or Origami, a stroller that folds and unfolds at the touch of a button, sports daytime running lights (!), has a LCD dashboard that shows temperature, trip and lifetime distance travelled, and speed.

The kicker? It not only charges itself while you walk, but it also charges your phone.

This is not yo momma’s stroller.

Essentially, the company is doing for parenting aids what Apple has done to consumer electronics and what Dyson is doing to home appliances: Making everyday tools smarter and better by harnessing an intensely user-focused design to the power of sophisticated modern technology.

Of course, all this high-end automation and electronics does not come cheap: Origami is $850. MamaRoo is a comparative bargain at only $200.

According to AllThingsD, the company plans to use the new funding to expand internationally and increase the range of products it offers.

I’m not a mother (does father count?) but I would have loved these tools — although price would have been an issue.

My biggest question: When will 4Moms focus on the biggest source of home drudgery: preparing meals?

Vroom, vroom. Neato Robotics has just snagged $12.2 million in fourth round funding for its robot vacuum cleaner.

We all thought the future would be full of robots doing our house work for us. Well in the case of vacuuming, those dreams came true a few years ago with iRobot’s Roomba, one of the first home robot vacuums to gain mass attention. Neato Robotics came along a bit later than the Roomba and introduced a robot vacuum that uses lasers to guide itself.

A competitor to iRobot’s Roomba, Neato Robotics has three robot vacuums with less cute names, the Neato XV-11, Neato XV-12, and a new model, the Neato XV-21. Both models stand out from the Roomba by using lasers to scan a room to detect furniture and find particularly dirty areas. According to the company, the vacuums can map out a room so precisely to avoid walls and furniture, that it’s more efficient than the Roomba, which bumps into obstacles and then turns around.

Neato Robotics has raised a total of $35 million for its technology. Vorwerk Ventures and Noventi Ventures led this series D round, which will be used to grow the company’s business and launch the Neato XV-21 in stores.

Neato Robotics was founded in 2004 and is in based in Newark, Calif., near Silicon Valley.

The U.S. Navy has just taken the wraps off a sexy new robotics facility. The bots created and refined there will be automated wonders, some of them amphibious, some able to fight fires or fly, and ever so much more.

The Naval Research Laboratory has opened its Laboratory for Autonomous Systems Research (LASR — see what they did there?), what the Navy is calling the “nerve system” for research on autonomous robotics to help the Navy and Marine Corps in their missions and to get new robotic tech to the front line as soon as possible, according to a statement released by NRL today.

LASR will be home to researchers working in intelligent autonomy, sensor systems, power and energy systems, human-system interaction, networking and communications, and platforms.

Some of the bots being built at LASR include small autonomous air and ground vehicles, at least one swimming bot, and specialized robots for fighting fires aboard ships.

Yes, we say with a measure of impatience, but can they sing and dance? The Navy’s number-one export to date is, in our book, singing and dancing sailors, and it’d take a heck of a robot to top that.

The new, $17.7 million dollar facility got its official ribbon-cutting ceremony just two weeks ago, nearly two years after ground was initially broken on the site. The facility includes a wide range of environments for testing, from simulated deserts and rainforests to a 45-by-25-foot pool with a wave generator capable of producing directional waves.

The Navy said the number and type of research robotics projects will increase as researchers register to use the new LASR facility.

“It’s the first time that we have, under a single roof, a laboratory that captures all the domains in which our Sailors, Marines and fellow DOD service members operate,” said Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research, in today’s release. “Advancing robotics and autonomy are top priorities for the Office of Naval Research. We want to reduce the time it takes to deliver capability to our warfighters performing critical missions. This innovative facility bridges the gap between traditional laboratory research and in-the-field experimentation-saving us time and money.”

Here are some images of the robots and their new home:

Canadian pop superstar Justin Bieber made an appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show on Wednesday to help promote a dancing robot from TOSY Robotics. No, he did not dance “the robot” with the robot, but hey, at least he signed some autographs.

Bieber was on hand to talk up the mRobo Ultra Bass robot, the latest device from Vietnamese manufacturer TOSY. The robot has a large speaker at its middle section to play music and it can dance along with whatever tunes it is playing. The robot did a relatively poor job of dancing during his performance and could only do the splits, but it the device is still in beta.

The Consumer Electronics Show floor often has celebrity appearances, but this was easily the biggest one in terms of crowds this year. People were crawling over each other to take photos, and several people I asked on the floor said they wanted to get pics for their children. Bieber’s fan base is comprised heavily of young women, and there was a group of girls that shouted “We love you Justin!” twice during his appearance.

TOSY expects the mRobo Ultra Bass robot to retail for $200 and it will be available in the fall of 2012.

Launched on December 20th by RobotShop, the social network aims to connect robots and other intelligent electronic devices to the Internet. Instead of posts about how much fun they had with friends last night, robots can post useful updates such as “My battery is low” or “Help me, I’m stuck in a corner.” Updates from the robots are automatic and can be monitored by the robot’s human companion. You can also control your robots remotely and monitor their needs from MyRobots.

Right now computers, Arduino controlled devices and a few robots such as the  NAO Humanoid Robot can connect to the service to post updates. RobotShop also created a serial-to-ethernet gateway that connects any unsupported device to MyRobots. Other robots will be able to connect soon, including the floor-cleaning Roomba.

The service is completely free and operates on an open-source application programming interface (API). So go ahead, connect your robots and let the socializing begin.

Via Forbes

If you haven’t gotten a gift for your robot this Cyber Monday (what, you don’t have one yet?), you might want to think about visiting the RobotsAppStore, the Internet’s first portal for paid robot apps. The RobotsAppStore hosts a variety of programs created by enthusiasts worldwide who want to extend the functionality of robots everywhere.

A”programmable robot” is something of a misnomer if you stop to think about it. In order for a robot to do anything, it had to be programmed by somebody.

“The robot itself is just a device without the software,” says RobotsAppStore founder and chief executive officer Elad Inbar.  ”The software is actually what is giving it the core, or the benefits that we humans want.” Reprogramming a robot to do something new really isn’t a leap. Neither is connecting it to the Internet in order to in download new programs. Hundreds of millions of smart phone owners do it every day to get Angry Birds, Yelp or apps that tell us when the next bus is going to arrive. Soon connecting a robot will be no different.

The smart phone revolution, which was ushered in by Apple’s iPhone, began little more than four years ago. Today there are more than 500,000 apps in the iTunes App Store.

There are 17 million personal robots in the wild, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Inbar says that there are 6 million Roomba units alone. Roombas are robots that automatically sweep and vacuum,  and use infrared to find their way around. They’ve been modified in a number of amusing ways, such as  being programmed to select a Guinness from a row of beer cans.

RobotsAppStore predicts that the market for robot apps will grow from around 500 apps today, to 750,000 unique apps within four years. At that rate there will 18 billion downloads, worth $3 billion.

Inbar brought a Nao humanoid robot to the VentureBeat office to demonstrate the capabilities of an App-store connected robot. Designed by Aldebaran Robotics from France, The Nao costs about $15,000, and is  just shy of two feet tall (57 centimeters). It walks upright and  has the same range of motions as a toddler. However, because it’s loaded with sensors, it has the ability to navigate a room, track objects and respond to people and faces.

In the video above, you can see the robot following a red ball based on programmer’s instructions. At 1:04, you can see Nao dancing along to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,’ and someone programmed the robot to mimic the choreography from the classic music video. What it could do someday is bound only by the limits of the human imagination. With such a wide variety of robotic forms already available, there are almost no end to the possibilities.

“They’re actually smart computers with motors, with cameras with sensors and so-on,” says Inbar.  ”Applications is the next evolution. Applications is trivial. It has to happen.”

There are currently five members of  the RobotsAppStore team, and the company has received $250,000 in angel funding from friends, family and colleagues. The company is currently looking to raise a new round of investment.

A couple of days ago, we told you about the free-wheelin’, music-playing robots that OLogic showed off at the Demo fall conference. Today, we can show you more about how those robots work, how much they’ll cost, when you can buy them and more.

AMP (that’s Automated Music Personality) will follow you around and play your favorite music for you. You can attach an iPod or other digital music player to its back, or you can stream your tunes directly to the robot over Bluetooth from your phone. The AMP also comes with mobile apps for iPhone and Android to control the bot (with a virtual joystick) and your music.

I sat down with Bob Allen, Ted Larson, AMP (the two-wheeled music bot) and a new robot, the Oddwerx phone dock, for a lovely tea party. Watch the video for the juicy details on pricing and availability, as well as some of OLogic’s backstory in the robotics department.

Ruckus Media lands $3.5M for storybook apps: The developer of mobile apps geared toward children has raised a first round of funding led by Alsop  Louie Partners. The Norwalk, Conn.-based company, which currently offers apps through Apple’s iTunes, plans to expand its offerings to other app stores and platforms with the funding. Ruckus has distributed 15 kid-focused apps since its September launch.

Vurve brings in $4.5M to simplify online advertising: The Palo Alto-based developer of software for managing ad campaigns has raised a first round of funding from Spark Capital, 500 Startups and True Ventures, TechCrunch reports. Based on a user’s budget, the company automatically generates ads on sites like Facebook, Bing and Google, then takes a 15 percent cut of the budget as a fee. The site launched to the public in November.

Cyphort gets $1.2M to prevent cyber crimes: The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has raised funding to develop software for malware protection, according to a filing with the SEC. Founded in 2008, the startup, still in stealth mode, is developing solutions to protect enterprises and governments from attack.

Tibion raises $10.2M for robotic knees: The developer of bionic devices for stroke victims has raised a second round of funding from Claremont Creek Ventures, Three Arch Partners and Hambrecht & Quist Capital Management. Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company’s devices, which are managed by a computer, help users learn to walk again. The company began marketing its device to rehab centers in 2010 and hopes to sell 60 to 70 devices this year.

If you’ve been keeping an eye out for emerging market opportunities, it might interest you that robotics is one of today’s fastest growing technologies. Innovation takes place primarily in the battlefield (Iraq and Afghanistan) and through defense contracts, so most of the developments taking place are not yet widely known.

In “Wired for War,” author P.W. Singer explains how this progress will dramatically change the way that war is fought.

Science fiction fans will be struck at how much art and reality are converging. The author explains why this transformation is happening now, accelerating after 9/11, and covers some implications including our future propensity for war.  Billions of development and procurement dollars and the continued price/performance improvement of the low cost off-the-shelf hardware from which robots are built means that the capabilities of inexpensive robots will soon begin to dazzle us in the domestic market, as far-fetched as that may seem.

Big ideas from “Wired for War”:

Robots are getting cheaper, faster and smarter – really fast. Your autofocus camcorder lens offers the same technology as robots being deployed in Iraq. Common, low cost, USB connectors are used for robot arms and appendages. The same technologies that deliver reduced size and improved performance in PCs, consumer electronics and smart phones will deliver exponential progress in robotics.

9/11 changed military interest levels in unmanned systems, when (for example) an unmanned Predator armed with a hellcat missile destroyed several key Al-Qaeda operatives.

The US government got robotics religion in 2001. At that time, the Senate Armed Services Committee mandated that one-third of all attack aircraft be unmanned within the decade, and a third of all ground combat vehicles be driverless by 2015. At the core of the shift is U.S. public resistance to American casualties on the battlefield.

IRobot is an example of a newly public robotics company capitalizing on this revolution. The company has two market-leaders in radically divergent applications. Roomba, a robotic domestic vacuum cleaner, has sold millions of units. Its predecessor, though, was developed for the Air Force to collect cluster bomblets from airfields.

IRobot also sells Packbot, a leading bomb disposal robot, first introduced in the 9/11 World Trade Center rescue effort. Thousands now support both Iraq and Afghanistan military efforts in the field, delivering hundreds of millions in sales, and saving the lives of hundreds of soldiers. Packbots have also been adapted to applications including field rescue (Medbots), armed with liquid bandages, morphine and diagnostic equipment.

In the Air Force, the most dramatic shift that’s taking place is unmanned drones. Cadets with extensive video game experience often do well at controlling them remotely from locations half way around the world in Nevada. Systems are being designed more and more like video games to help users pilot them, processing the large amount of data information required to do so effectively from a long distance.

In the sea, robotic ships are being developed that require little or no crew, as well as submersibles that can explore areas that humans can’t. The BP oil spill recovery effort provides a timely civilian demonstration of what underwater robots can accomplish.

For the future – the military has begun field-testing robotic soldiers:  Packbots and other Explosive Ordinance Disposal (or EOD) robots armed with weapons for selective operations.  One day, squads of robotic soldiers headed by a human squad leader may effect raids and similar operations.  Robotic soldiers are more accurate and lack the human emotional challenges facing their human counterparts.

Today’s robots can only operate on about 30 percent of battlefield terrains but designs are being tested that overcome the limitations of robot ‘legs’ and make robotic soldiers a reality.  The first soldier may have three or four legs to deal with balance and special terrain issues, looking more like an armed dog.

Clearly there are questions and repercussions: How will this new battlefield help or challenge American security cover; How will our enemies react? Will America (or others with this technology) be judicious with force if its own troops are not at risk?

Applied knowledge:
For entrepreneurs, the lesson is clear: Robotics will be a large growth market.  We will see more opportunities emerge alongside these first applications in the military, but also in vertical industrial applications where a hazard exists – or even household uses.

Be on the lookout for single function applications that can be effectively replaced (biohazards, nuclear plant maintenance) or by remote monitoring with increased safety or process improvement.  The best robotic applications are jobs with the three ‘D’s – dirty, dull and dangerous.

At a glance:
Title: Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
Authors: P.W. Singer
Publisher: Penguin Group
Length: 512 pages

• PolyRemedy, developer of robotic wound care, takes in $25M (release)
• Bacchus Vascular gets $15M for clot-busting device (VentureWire)
• Protein-evolution company Modular Genetics gets $1.2M (VentureWire)
• PharmatrophiX gets $300K for Alzheimer’s disease prevention drugs (release)
• Light Sciences Oncology withdraws IPO (Edgar)
• Arizona’s Translational Accelerator launches $20M life-sciences fund (bizjournals.com)
• Cornea-reshaper Avedro gets $7M (VentureWire)
• Gastrotech Pharma gets $6M in wake of Lilly deal (VentureWire)
• Biomaterials maker MiMedx goes public via reverse merger (release)
• Acrongenomics to complete acquisition of Molecular Vision by the end of Q1 (release)

PolyRemedy, developer of robotic wound care, takes in $25M – Mountain View, Calif.-based PolyRemedy, a developer of systems that robotically manufacture wound dressings for patients, raised $25 million in a second funding round. Investors included Advanced Technology Ventures, IDG Ventures Boston, MedVenture Associates and Harris & Harris Group.

PolyRemedy has been keeping quiet about its work until now, but the company’s release lays out its strategy, which is to fabricate customized wound dressings at the “point of care” — here, apparently, doctors’ offices and home-care situations. The goal is to provide better treatment for chronic wounds such as diabetic ulcers, a common complication of diabetes that can manifest in the feet and other extremities as a result of nerve damage and poor blood circulation. The company claims its technology has been proven in clinical trials, but hasn’t provided any details.

Bacchus Vascular gets $15M for clot-busting device – Bacchus Vascular, a Santa Clara, Calif., developer of devices for local drug treatment of blood clots, raised $15 million in an extension of a recent recapitalization round, VentureWire reports. Investors included Vertical Group, Warburg Pincus, Kaiser Permanente Venture Development and Bacchus founder Thomas J. Fogarty.

Bacchus makes and markets a system it calls Trellis, which is a minimally invasive, catheter-based device consisting of two inflatable balloons and a “dispersion wire.” Physicians thread the catheter through the clot and inflate balloons at each end of it, then infuse a clot-busting drug directly into the clot. The dispersion wire then mechanically helps break up the clot, whose remains are then sucked out through the catheter. Bacchus is currently focused on deep-vein thrombosis, which are large clots usually located in the legs. Its device was approved in 2005, and the company intends to use the new funds to expand its marketing efforts.

Bacchus restarted with a $7.6 million recapitalization in June 2006 after apparently exhausting the patience of two initial investors, Three Arch Partners and De Novo Ventures, who haven’t participated in subsequent fundings. Prior to the recapitalization, Bacchus had raised $40 million, according to VentureWire.

Protein-evolution company Modular Genetics gets $1.2M – Modular Genetics, a Cambridge, Mass., biotech that engineers new proteins with enhanced function, raised $1.2 million toward an expected $5 million fourth funding round, VentureWire reports. Individual investors provided the funding.

Modular makes a gene-engineering system it calls the CombiGenex that can shuffle and recombine genes in order to make modified or novel proteins. By making thousands of slightly different molecules and then screening for the ones with improved functions, Modular aims to “evolve” new proteins for therapeutic uses.

PharmatrophiX gets $300K for Alzheimer’s disease prevention drugs – San Francisco’s PharmatrophiX (no Web site), a biotech working on drugs that prevent neurodegenerative disease, received a $300,000 grant from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation. Founded by Stanford researcher Frank Longo, PharmatrophiX is developing a class of drugs that mimic the activity of proteins called neurotrophins, which aid in the development, health and survival of neurons.

Light Sciences Oncology withdraws IPO – Bellevue, Wash.-based Light Sciences Oncology, a developer of light-activated chemotherapy, withdrew its $96.6 million IPO, citing “unfavorable market conditions.” Light Sciences becomes the seventh life-science startup to yank an IPO filing this year.

Light Sciences has kept hope alive for an awfully long time. The company originally filed its registration statement in April 2006, but hasn’t amended it since September of that year. Light Sciences raised $30 million in a second funding round last July, despite its still-active IPO registration.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this item misstated PolyRemedy’s systems as “robotically apply[ing] wound dressings.” I’ve restated that to match the description in the second paragraph, which accurately describes the systems.