There are many reasons robotics companies fail. From an ill-conceived idea to poor execution or the inability to raise funding, building and running a sustainable robotics company is challenging. This is never a fun recap to write. We don't want to see startups fail, but inevitably many do. The last couple of years have been especially difficult thanks to a global pandemic, economic uncertainties and ongoing supply chain issues.

Google co-founder Larry Page's flying car startup Kittyhawk is winding down, the company announced Wednesday. "We're still working on the details of what's next," the company wrote in a LinkedIn post. Kittyhawk was founded as Zee.Aero in 2010 when Page recruited Sebastian Thrun, who had worked on self-driving cars and other experimental projects at Google, to create electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. The company unveiled a demonstration video of a flying car in 2017, and Thrun said he envisioned a time when people would be able to hail flying cars through an app like Lyft or Uber. Kittyhawk showcased a flying car model called the Flyer in 2018 that could hold one person and fly up to 20 miles. Thrun told CNBC in an interview earlier that year that the models could take to the skies within five years.

Kitty Hawk might have the backing of Google's Larry Page, but that doesn't mean things are going smoothly. Forbes has learned that Kitty Hawk dropped key engineer Damon Vander Lind in May after "months" of fighting with Page and CEO Sebastian Thrun over the company's strategy. Page and Thrun want to build a larger version of the Heaviside air taxi that autonomously carries two passengers with a remote pilot as backup, but Vander Lind reportedly felt this was "too risky." There were also accusations that Vander Lind was unreceptive to ideas and at times hostile to staff, Forbes sources claimed. Kitty Hawk further dealt with separate complaints of sexism.

SAN FRANCISCO – Toyota Motor Co. is making a $394 million (¥43.3 billion) investment in Joby Aviation, one of the handful of companies with the seemingly implausible goal of making electric air taxis that shuttle people over gridlocked highways and city streets. Toyota is the lead investor in Joby's $590 million Series C funding, alongside Baillie Gifford and Global Oryx and prior backers Intel Capital, Capricorn Investment Group, JetBlue Technology Ventures, SPARX Group and its own investment arm, Toyota AI Ventures. The deal, for now, makes the Santa Cruz, California-based Joby the best-funded "eVTOL" (electric vertical take-off and landing) startup in a booming category that must overcome significant regulatory hurdles and concerns about passenger safety and noise, bringing the total money it has raised to $720 million. "Air transportation has been a long-term goal for Toyota, and while we continue our work in the automobile business, this agreement sets our sights to the sky," said Toyota President and Chief Executive Officer Akio Toyoda. "As we take up the challenge of air transportation together with Joby, an innovator in the emerging eVTOL space, we tap the potential to revolutionize future transportation and life."

Once you get up high enough, you don't have to worry about a lot of the obstacles like pedestrians and traffic jams that plague autonomous cars. That's why Sebastian Thrun, Google's self-driving team founder turned CEO of flying vehicle startup Kitty Hawk, said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF today that we should expect true autonomy to succeed in the air before the road. "I believe we're going to be done with self-flying vehicles before we're done with self-driving cars," Thrun told TechCrunch reporter Kirsten Korosec. Why? "If you go a bit higher in the air then all the difficulties with not hitting stuff like children and bicycles and cars and so on just vanishes . . . Go above the buildings, go above the trees, like go where the helicopters are!" Thrun explained, but noted personal helicopters are so noisy they're being banned in some places like Napa, Calif. That proclamation has wide-reaching implications for how cities are planned and real estate is bought.

French inventor Frank Zapata grabbed headlines around the world this summer when he flew his hoverboard across the English channel from Pas de Calais, France, to the famous white cliffs of Dover. But Bay Area commuters may soon do Zapata one better by skimming above San Francisco Bay on autonomous, single-passenger drones being developed by a Peninsula start-up company with ties to Google. The automated drones are electrically powered, capable of vertical takeoff and landing, and would fly 10 feet above the water at 20 mph along a pre-determined flight path not subject to passenger controls. The drones' rotors are able to shift from vertical to horizontal alignment for efficient forward movement after takeoff. The company behind all this, three-year-old Kitty Hawk Corp., has personal financial backing from Google founder Larry Page, now CEO of Google's parent, Alphabet, who has long been interested in autonomous forms of transportation.

Twenty years from now we will speak all languages, recognise all faces, remember conversations and diseases that kill people today but will be detected much earlier now, thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered systems. In 50 years, it might be possible children born then will live to at least 200 years; and climate change will come to a halt! The world will be completely powered by alternate sources of energy instead of burning fossil fuels. In fact, Thrun, 51, who co-founded and runs three startups simultaneously, is working towards some of these goals himself. Udacity is for online learning, offering nano-degrees (short courses) in areas including drones and machine learning; Kitty Hawk Corp is making electric planes and flying cars while AI powered Cresta.ai is trying to automate repetitive jobs.

Mumbai: Sebastian Thrun is a man of many parts. The president and co-founder of e-learning company Udacity, is not only an innovator and computer scientist but also CEO of Kitty Hawk Corporation that makes flying cars and chairman of Cresta.ai--a Germany-born Thrun was earlier a Google VP and Fellow. At Google, he founded Google X and Google's self-driving car team. He is currently also an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University and at Georgia Tech.

Their technical forebears are, obviously, helicopters. But helicopters are "too noisy, inefficient, polluting and expensive for mass-scale use," says the white paper for UberAir, the company's aeromobile arm. "VTOL aircraft will make use of electric propulsion so they have zero operational emissions and will likely be quiet enough to operate in cities without disturbing the neighbors." Your weekly look at how innovation and technology are transforming the way we live, work and play. Tap here to get it delivered to your inbox.

The 51-year-old artificial intelligence and robotics scientist is responsible for co-developing Google Street View, pioneering self-driving cars, founding Google X – the internet giant's secretive research lab – and revolutionising education by kickstarting massive open online courses (Moocs). His most recent project is developing flying cars. You launched your flying car company, Kitty Hawk, in 2015 backed by Google co-founder Larry Page and you have two projects in development – a personal aircraft called Flyer and an autonomous air taxi called Cora. Why do we need flying cars? The ground is getting more and more congested – we are all stuck in traffic all the time.