Between the Perseverance Rover's one year anniversary on Mars, new services launching and exciting stories about robots in the field, there was no shortage of things to cover in February. Here are the Top 10 most popular robotics stories on The Robot Report in February 2022. Subscribe to The Robot Report Newsletter to stay updated on the robotics stories you need to know about. When Abundant Robotics, an agricultural robotics company, shut down in mid-2021, it cited a lack of funding and market traction as the two primary challenges. But that didn't scare away product development incubator Wavemaker Labs, which in October 2021 acquired the intellectual property (IP) of Abundant Robotics for an undisclosed amount.

The robotics industry started off the year with acquisitions, 2022 predictions and product announcements. Our editorial team had no problem staying busy while keeping up with all of the news. Here are the Top 10 most popular robotics stories on The Robot Report in January 2022. Subscribe to The Robot Report Newsletter to stay updated on the robotics stories you need to know about. Magna International, a Canadian developer of car mobility technology, acquired the technology, intellectual property, and other assets from Optimus Ride, a Boston-based company developing SAE Level 4 autonomous vehicles (AVs).

Smart speakers are taking over British homes. A recent UK Gov survey found the number had doubled in three months, with around 10% of Brits owning one – and that 75% of these were Amazon Echo devices. The overwhelming majority are used for basic tasks like playing music and answering general knowledge questions – but with the right tips, tricks, skills and accessories you can get the Echo's digital assistant Alexa to do just about anything… Privacy please You can always mute the mics on an Echo device to stop it listening, but if you're concerned you've been over-sharing, deleting your recordings and query history is the next step. Doing so is easy: you can select individual recordings in the Alexa app, or take the nuclear option and delete your daily, weekly, monthly or entire history through the Alexa privacy settings on the Amazon website. If you have multiple Alexa devices you can use them as an intercom in your home.

One of the surprise products of last week's Computex IT show in Taiwan was the Zenbo robot from Asus. The cute, two-wheeled, home-help robot will read stories to kids, summon help for seniors in an emergency and blast out songs while twirling around the floor to the music. But Asus is better known as a manufacturer of smartphones and laptop PCs. Home-help robots have been tried and failed before, so why did the company decide the time is right? IDG News Service spoke with Jonney Shih, chairman of Asus and the power behind much of the company's product planning and design, to find out more about Zenbo. Shih said he saw the robot as an evolution in computing -- something that followed on from the PC era, mobile computing, and the recent so-called Internet of Things.

One of the surprise products of last week's Computex IT show in Taiwan was the Zenbo robot from Asus. The cute, two-wheeled, home-help robot will read stories to kids, summon help for seniors in an emergency, and blast out songs while twirling around the floor to the music. But Asus is better known as a manufacturer of smartphones and laptop PCs. Home-help robots have been tried and failed before, so why did the company decide the time is right? IDG News Service spoke with Jonney Shih, chairman of Asus and the power behind much of the company's product planning and design, to find out more about Zenbo. Shih said he saw the robot as an evolution in computing -- something that followed on from the PC era, mobile computing, and the recent so-called Internet of Things.