How are you supposed to keep on the trillionaire crypto mogul grindset when you have to do something as mundane as placing one foot in front of the other to get to your next high-flying presentation? Well, here comes Shift Robotics to revolutionize the process of movement humanity has relied on for at least three million years. Looking for all the world like the Fisher Price roller skates of the '80s and '90s but for grown-ups, the company claims its "Moonwalkers" allow users to "walk at the speed of a run" but without all the unseemly sweating and hyperventilation. Think of that groovy sensation you get when gliding along a travelator at an airport, silently mocking passers-by walking at a regular pace who have not yet ascended to godhood. Yes, that, but attached to the soles of your feet.

Zurich - Founded in 2021, medtech aiEndoscopic combines artificial intelligence (AI) with robotic endoscopy. Its first development, intuBot, presents an all-in-one solution for airway management. It aims to make the life-saving process of endotracheal intubation, used in emergency medicine in particular, much easier and thus save lives. It is based on a collaborative project with ETH Zurich, University Hospital Zurich, and the University of Zurich. Additionally, the startup has been selected to form part of the Switzerland Innovation Park Zürich as well as to join the group of Swiss Venture Leaders Medtech 2022.

Venture capital firms are eager to allocate money into robotics firms in a wide range of industries from shipping to healthcare as more automation became a focus during the global pandemic. In 2021, funding globally for robotics and drone companies rose to $14.9 billion, according to PitchBook. The amount of funding raised for robotics in 2022 has been steady. By January, VCs allocated $560 million of funding into robotics startups, excluding the round for Wandelbots, a German industrial robotics company that raised $84 million for its Series C round in January. The funding for the company's no-code platform came from U.S. investor Insight Partners, which led the round and was also supported by its existing backers - Microsoft (MSFT) - Get Microsoft Corporation Report, 83North, Next47, Paua, Atlantic Labs and EQT.

Years ago, robots were inflexible, hard to program, stationary and, except for industries with long production runs, cost-prohibitive. Plus, they were blind, deaf, incapable of tactile sensing, unintelligent and couldn't be trusted to work next to people. Now, thanks to stronger processing power, sophisticated software that simplifies programming and operation, machine learning (ML), machine vision (MV), more and better sensors and end effectors and other developments, robots are more flexible and capable than ever. In addition, the relative cost of robotics has gone down. With the growing need for quality and throughput amidst a shortage of skilled workers, the use of robotics in manufacturing is expanding.

Robots might not be taking over the world just yet, but they are becoming increasingly popular in our lives. Think about it, they clean our floors, make the products that we use everyday, mow our lawns and some of them are even serving as our pets! Robotics is a huge part of so many industries today from healthcare to manufacturing and logistics to construction. The industry has the potential to positively transform lives and work practices, raise efficiency and safety levels and provide enhanced levels of service across various different sectors. There has never been a better time to get involved in this field.

Earlier this week, Alphabet-owned DeepMind acquired a physics simulation platform MuJoCo, which stands for Multi-Joint Dynamics with Contact. After the acquisition, the DeepMind Robotics Simulation team, which had been using MuJoCo in the past, is planning to fully open-source the platform in 2022 and make it freely available for everyone to support research everywhere. Check out the GitHub repository of MuJoCo here. This will be its future home for this platform. We've acquired the MuJoCo physics simulator (https://t.co/knwXLZMr4L) and are making it free for all, to support research everywhere.

About the Company: Founded in 2018, Agile Robots has become a leading robotics startup, as well as the only unicorn in the field of intelligent robotics in the world. With the aim of promoting the combination and innovation of robotics, the startup has expanded the application of robotics to more fields by supporting the medical, manufacturing, agriculture, and education industries. At present, Agile Robots is trying to expand to markets around the world, especially in China. To achieve this purpose, the robotics startup has cooperated with many partners in China including orthopedic surgery robots and neurosurgery robot companies, general hospitals, and other enterprises around the world.

In the world of robotic startups, acquisition is often as good an outcome as any. And when it comes to robotic tractor startups, you could do worse than being acquired by John Deere. The agricultural technology giant announced today that it's set to acquire Bear Flag Robotics for $250 million. The Bay Area-based firm, which specializes in autonomous farming heavy machinery, was founded in 2017. They first crossed our radar the following year, as a member of YC's Winter 2018 cohort.

When Amazon acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012, it became a catalytic event for venture investment in robotics companies. Venture capitalists (VCs) envisioned replicating this success in a much bigger way (i.e., creating unicorn companies). And Silicon Valley engineers wanted to capitalize on the opportunity to not only fill the void left by Kiva in the marketplace but to also go a step further and build more capable robots. The VC appetite for robotics and related hardware grew unabated for almost a decade, leading to a staggering aggregate funding of roughly $20 billion to date. This capital infusion cemented the robotics space as one of the hottest sectors of the decade.

This episode is about learning the options you have to get some money to start your startup and what is expected you achieve with that money. In this podcast series of episodes we are going to explain how to create a robotics startup step by step. We are going to learn how to select your co-founders, your team, how to look for investors, how to test your ideas, how to get customers, how to reach your market, how to build your product… Starting from zero, how to build a successful robotics startup. I'm Ricardo Tellez, CEO and co-founder of The Construct startup, a robotics startup at which we deliver the best learning experience to become a ROS Developer, that is, to learn how to program robots with ROS. Our company is already 5 years long, we are a team of 10 people working around the world.