Would you like a robot companion or a konpanion?

I’m a total sucker for robot pets/cushions. I definitely enjoy a Qoobo on my couch. At Robosoft in 2022, I additionally met Alexander Colle, the vogue designer/developer of Maah aka Konpanion. Konpanion became once supported by the Edinburgh University Superlab analysis laboratory and in 2023 won a fundamental Scottish Edge award of £80K.

Integrating trim form with artificial intelligence, Boroboscot – procuring and selling as Konpanion – is pioneering a determined route for domestic robotics and constructing an totally original species of different pets. Maah is the very most fascinating robot out there utilizing a quilt totally made of a material, bringing neat abilities to life within the accomplish of an artificial pet.

We’re on a mission to bring accomplice robots into properties for the duration of the region. We imagine that Maah is the ultimate mix of accomplish and feature, acting each and every as a stylish half of interior form and a beloved pet.

Our robots are crafted utilizing cutting-edge textile trend systems, reasonably than mature inflexible plastic exteriors. This collection highlights our ambition to originate one other model of trend for accomplice robots. the place aesthetics meets sustainability and craft.

Powered by a newly-developed AI architecture in a position to discovering out and stressful expressions (artificial feelings) by device of physique language and sound, Maah beautifully makes use of ideas pertaining to to human empathy. Unlike robots that provide downhearted makes an strive at conversation, Maah performs with your senses and bonds with you thru extra natural, non-verbal conversation

Is what I did my master’s thesis on, alternatively that became once in 2010-2011 so I didn’t grapple with the industrial realities of selecting a name which will additionally be remembered and spelt as it will enjoy to be, and no longer autocorrected to “did you indicate accomplice?” on a typical foundation. Here’s a topic price having somebody with Search and web explain material positioning expertize advising you on.

And mediate additionally what your product name formula or sounds admire to folks that discuss languages rather then English. There are a style of tales of Fortune 500 corporations having to pull a poorly named product eg. the Inc article beneath from Geoffrey James.

Ought to you’re globalizing a cost, it’s frequently a correct notion to envision whether your name, price, or label line formula something a host of within the areas the place you’re increasing. Here are the 20 worst examples that pushed apart this obligatory advertising and marketing and marketing and marketing step:

1. Braniff Global translated a slogan touting its finely upholstered seats “Drag in Leather” into Spanish as “Drag Bare.”

2. Clairol launched a curling iron known as “Mist Stick” in Germany even supposing “mist” is German slang for manure.

3. Coca-Cola‘s price name, when first marketed in China, became once infrequently translated as “Bite The Wax Tadpole.”

4. Colgate launched toothpaste in France named “Cue” without realizing that it’s additionally the name of a French pornographic journal.

5. Coors translated its slogan, “Flip It Loose,” into Spanish, the place it’s miles a colloquial term for having diarrhea.

6. Electrolux at one time marketed its vacuum cleaners within the U.S. with the label line: “Nothing sucks admire an Electrolux.”

7. Ford blundered when advertising and marketing and marketing and marketing the Pinto in Brazil for the explanation that term in Brazilian Portuguese formula “dinky male genitals.”

8. Frank Perdue’s label line, “It takes a sturdy man to make a tender chicken,” purchased translated into Spanish as “It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate.”

9. Gerber marketed limited one meals in Africa with a cute limited one on the tag without lustrous that, in Ethiopia, as an illustration, products frequently enjoy photos on the tag of what is internal since many patrons can not read.

10. Ikea products had been marketed in Thailand with Swedish names that within the Thai language indicate “intercourse” and “getting to third snide.”

11. KFC made Chinese language patrons reasonably anxious when “finger licking correct” became once translated as “eat your fingers off.”

12. Mercedes-Benz entered the Chinese language market beneath the logo name “Bensi,” that formula “journey to die.”

13. Nike needed to recall thousands of products when a decoration supposed to resemble fireplace on the help of the shoes resembled the Arabic be aware for Allah.

14. Panasonic launched a Web-ready PC with a Woody Woodpecker theme utilizing the slogan “Contact Woody: The Web Pecker.”

15. Parker Pen, when increasing into Mexico, mistranslated “It might in all probability possibly well no longer leak in your pocket and embarrass you” into “It might in all probability possibly well no longer leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.”

16. Paxam, an Iranian consumer items company, markets laundry soap utilizing the Farsi be aware for “snow,” ensuing in features labeled “Barf Soap.”

17. Pepsi’s slogan “Pepsi Brings You Motivate to Existence” became once debuted in China as “Pepsi Brings You Motivate from the Grave.”

18. Puffs marketed its tissues beneath that price name in Germany even supposing “puff” is German slang for a brothel.

19. The American Dairy Affiliation replicated its “Obtained Milk?” campaign in Spanish-speaking international locations the place it became once translated into “Are You Lactating?”

20. Vicks presented its cough drops into the German market without realizing that the German pronunciation of “v” is “f” making “Vicks” slang for sexual intercourse.

BTW, you might need seen that possibly the most neatly-known translation blunder–Chevy “Nova” translated into Spanish as “Might possibly presumably presumably no longer Drag”–is rarely on the checklist. It be an metropolis story.

And to use on from final week, right here are some extra info/figures about the magnificence industry. Merchants enjoy poured $8 billion into magnificence, pores and skincare and hair care startups since 2018, in line with PitchBook, and magnificence brands had been resilient when put next with other consumer startups that struggled once the e-commerce slowdown started in gradual 2021. Many had been ready to search out prospects cheaply utilizing TikTok advertising and marketing and marketing and marketing and neatly-known individual promotion, after which invent on that popularity by increasing into stores admire Sephora.

• No longer no longer as much as five magnificence startups enjoy employed bankers to search out gross sales
• Possible acquirers dwell cautious after 2021 dealmaking frenzy
• Corporations are prioritizing smaller acquisitions of no longer as much as $1 billion

The applying reduce relief-off date is Friday, July 26 2024

An match for cleantech startups to join with companions who might well help you scale. From NREL Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center – August 12-14 Denver, Colorado

Drag to CoolestThingCalifornia.com to nominate your California-made product for the 2nd annual Coolest Factor Made in California Contest hosted by CMTA.

The most modern round of the Solar Prize is now initiate. Bigger than $4.2 million will be disbursed to opponents over this three-phase competition designed to catalyze innovations in U.S. solar hardware and utility technologies with the aptitude to be commercialized in 3 to 5 years. Learn extra about the start of the Solar Prize Spherical 8!

The KUKA Innovation Award 2025 essentially targets the interaction of robotic systems with folks within the clinical environment and robots being phase of future clinical features. Contributors from academia, analysis and industry are encouraged to demonstrate device ideas that will possibly well lead to, or are already on the edge to, commercialization. Deadline for application June 28

The aim of the robot form competition of the Thirty third RO-MAN is to give a platform for researchers and college students from a various background to label their vision of interactive robotics, and encourage their peers on how human-centered intelligence might well carry human-robot interaction. Every crew’s initial submission wants to be a 2-4 page pictorial, following the resolution template initiate layout. Deadline extended to June 27

The U.S. Division of Commerce is committed to advancing transparency, innovation, and the to blame use and dissemination of public records sources, including to be used by records-pushed AI technologies. To this dwell, we’re elated to scenario this Expect for Recordsdata (RFI) to gaze treasured insights from industry consultants, researchers, civil society organizations, and other contributors of the general public on the trend of AI-ready initiate records sources and records dissemination requirements.

https://entrepreneurship.ieee.org/2024-announcing_impact_award/…

$2000 USD HONORARIUM

Develop you understand a individual/crew who very much impacts the engineering-pushed entrepreneurial ecosystem?

SUBMIT NOMINATIONS OR SELF APPLY

https://entrepreneurship.ieee.org/impact_award/

When you furthermore mght can very correctly be a (VC, PE, Grant) funded startup looking out out for to power pipeline, behavior customer discovery, salvage of the tell of the customer, or a combination of these – our crew is correct the exquisite combination of nimble and structured.

I’ve viewed Fulcrum Sales and Marketing articulate a plump pipeline of qualified prospects to SBIR startups embarking on fundraising. And they manufacture it cheaply. They’re a startup secret weapon and superpower. :)

From The Recordsdata ….

LMSYS, a company that benchmarks LLMs, launched findings final month on how the efficiency of LLMs modified between current queries and more difficult ones that require extra reasoning capabilities. LMSYS uses “Elo rankings,” a measure of relative efficiency—so that you’d set a matter to the efficiency metrics to dwell the same in each and every cases.

As a change, it stumbled on that many items—including Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, Cohere’s Utter R+ and Meta Platforms’ Llama 3—saw a marked decline in efficiency when transferring from current to laborious prompts. OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus had been amongst the few that maintained their efficiency. Take a look at out the bottom of their weblog submit right here for examples of these “laborious” questions, admire coding complications.

The decline in efficiency from so many LLMs in overall is a signal that LLMs nonetheless aren’t very correct at complicated reasoning on the present time, talked about Ion Stoica, a Berkeley computer science professor who additionally runs LMSYS, noting that OpenAI and Anthropic might well enjoy developed particular ways to give items about a of these talents. (Stoica is additionally a cofounder of AI startup Anyscale and project utility firm Databricks).

The Beginning of a Slither to Ship the Closing 50 Ft – VIODI.com

OpenVLA is an initiate provide generalist robotics model – VentureBeat

Researchers introduce OpenVLA, an initiate-provide generalist AI model for robotics tasks – Silicon Attitude

NATO targets AI, robots and dwelling tech in $1.1 billion fund – Reuters

Robots might well change into significantly higher newcomers thanks to ground-breaking formula devised by Dyson-backed analysis — placing off mature complexities in teaching robots get tasks will make them even extra human – TechRadar

Swallow this robot: Endiatx’s dinky pill examines your physique with cameras, sensors – VentureBeat

GrayMatter raises $45M Sequence B to ease robot programming for producers – The Robotic File

Robotic Mimics Human Sense of Contact to Better Form Through Litter – GoodNewsNetwork

Robotaxis Run Native Regulation in California – Authorities Know-how

Public servants uneasy as authorities ‘gaze’ robot prowls federal places of work – CBC

At China expo, AI robots take middle stage – Xinhua

German robotics industry faces stiff competition from China, VDMA says – Reuters

Self reliant kitchen developer Circus to roll out 5,400 robots for the duration of Beijing – The Robotic File

Motivate Robotics Appoints Euan Abraham as Chief Hardware and Manufacturing Officer – PRNewswire

Kraken Robotics Receives $2.2 Million Present for Subsea Batteries – GlobeNewswire

Robotic discovers oldest deep-sea Bronze Age shipwreck 1.1 miles underwater – Attention-grabbing Engineering

Here’s the Most Buglike Robotic Worm Yet: It might in all probability possibly well enjoy to take off, cruise, land, dawdle and even flip itself over – IEEE Spectrum

A conveyable inflatable tender wearable robot to abet the shoulder for the duration of business work – ScienceRobotics

Robotic backyard mowers – the next broad frontier for neat properties – Tom’s Manual

Weekends Are Mine Again, Garden Seems to be Tall: How Robotic Garden Mowers Adjustments My Existence – CNET

Drained with your robot? Why no longer EAT it? – Hackaday

AutoStore’s Unique Robotic Manufacturing facility Makes Present Chains Safer – Present Chain

On this week’s episode, Alexander Colle nearly drops in from Scotland to chat about the arena of robots for a candid conversation about human-robot interaction and a few serious robot matters admire are you able to admire a robot? And the device are you able to make a human-centric robot, and what on this planet is up with these robots in Westworld? However we’re in correct palms because Alexander is a French roboticist and entrepreneur who has worked on various accomplice robots with a original pillow robot known as Maah within the works. He’s at this time tucked away in Scotland, getting his Ph.D. from the Edinburgh Center for Robotics in Robotics, focusing on aesthetics and robots. Alexander is passionately centered on increasing robots to enhance society with a determined form approach.

Take a look at out this very icy mission that centered on frailty and healthcare. Safe out all the pieces you might well presumably presumably enjoy to learn about this robotic pillow at Konpanion. Alexander’s consultancy with his good inventive companions who correct sit down around all day focusing on robotics and aesthetics at We Are Pocco. And Alexander’s US client engaged on automation and mining (remember the entire copper discuss?)

• SF Deep Tech Week – begins Saturday June 22

• Fleet Takeoff – Sunday June 23

• Las Vegas Robotics Meetup – June 27 (maybe in individual, maybe subsequent month)

• Defense Industrial Depraved Hackathon – June 28

• SVR Startup Accelerator – 10.30am – 12.30pm Tuesday July 2nd

  Audio system on IP and manufacturing/scaling with China and without

SEMICON West + FLEX is correct around the nook! Join thousands of attendees from July 9-11, 2024 at Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA.

Don’t walk away out one of the most industry’s most anticipated match the place visionary leaders, insightful programs, groundbreaking technologies, and unparalleled networking opportunities await.

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• AIM 2024 Boston MA 14 July – 18 July

• RSS Delft NL July 15-19

• EMBC Orlando FL July 15-19

• Humanoid Robotics Competition Lima Peru Aug 14-15-16

• CASE 2024 Puglia Italy 28 Aug – 1 Sep 2024

• BioRob Heidelberg DE 1 Sep-Sep 4

• Commercial UAV Expo : Sep 03 – Sep 05, 2024 . Las Vegas, United States of The united states

• CLAWAR 2024 Kaiserslauten DE Sep 4 – Sep 6

• Actuate Summit : Sep 18, 2024 . San Francisco, United States of The united states

• ICRA@40 Rotterdam NL 23 Sep – 26 Sep

• ANTS (Swarm robotics) 2024 : Oct 09 – Oct 11, 2024 . Konstanz, Germany

• IROS 2024 AbuDhabi 14 Oct – 18 Oct

• FabTech Orlando 15 Oct -17 Oct

• ROSCon Odense DK 21 Oct – 23 Oct

• CORL Munich DE 6 Nov – 9 Nov

• IEEE Future of Telepresence Pasadena CA 16 Nov – 17 Nov

• Humanoids 2024 Nancy FR 26 Nov – 28 Nov

• ProMat : Mar 17 – Mar 20, 2025 . Chicago, United States of The united states

• ICRA 2025 Atlanta Georgia 17 Might possibly presumably presumably fair – 23 Might possibly presumably presumably fair 2025

The most modern IEEE Robotics and Automation Journal is out, including the Industry Actions Board column “What does the hype about humanoids definitely indicate?”

A creamsicle cat named Indy, who previously realized toddle on a treadmill, stumbled on himself regarded as to be a pile of dust by an keen robot vacuum that pushed him firmly beneath an armchair as it became once cleansing the room. Pointless to declare, Indy’s folks had been amused.

Indy became once peacefully relaxing on the bottom ignorant of the undeniable truth that the mistaken robot spotted him as a principal pile of dust and determined to brush him. However the dust became once being refined so the robot then determined to correct push him beneath the couch…