Autodesk looks to future with investments in 3D robotic drones and IoT as a service

When you think of Autodesk, you probably think of desktop software and traditional manufacturing, but the company is trying hard to change that perception, and today it announced the first three investments from its 100 million Forge Fund, which includes a 3D robotics drone company, an on-demand machine shop service and a platform for building smart connected Internet of Things devices -- sexy enough for you? Autodesk, which was founded in 1982, has been looking for ways to shake things up and one way was launching the cloud-based Forge development platform at the end of last year, along with the 100 million fund to encourage companies to start building interesting applications on top of it. This week, the company is holding its first developer conference, Forge DevCon, and these three companies certainly represent a sharp departure from your run-of-the-mill 1980s CAD software. Each company -- 3D Robotics, MakeTime and Seebo -- have existed for some time. In fact, 3DR has been around since 2009 and has collected more than 126 million in funding.