How YC-backed Bucket Robotics survived its first CES

How YC-backed Bucket Robotics survived its first CES

The weather in Las Vegas wasn’t looking good. The plan had been that each employee of YC-backed Bucket Robotics would carry parts of their booth in their luggage to the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show. But CEO and founder Matt Puchalski didn’t want to take the chance that one (or all) of their flights would be delayed. So he rented a Hyundai Santa Fe and packed it up.  “It was… it was tight,” he said with a laugh on the show floor.  …

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Pickle Robot adds Tesla veteran as first CFO

Pickle Robot adds Tesla veteran as first CFO

Pickle Robot, which builds autonomous unloading robots for warehouses and distribution centers, announced a new chief financial officer just days after a reports of a major deal with UPS. The Charlestown, Massachusetts-based company announced that it hired Jeff Evanson as its CFO on Thursday. Evanson had been consulting for the company since September and recently…

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Skana Robotics helps fleets of underwater robots communicate with each other

Skana Robotics helps fleets of underwater robots communicate with each other

Underwater autonomous vessels and robots could play a substantial role in defense operations, but submersibles have historically had trouble communicating across large distances unless they rose to the surface. But coming up to transmit poses the very obvious risk of being exposed. Skana Robotics thinks it’s made a breakthrough with underwater communications using AI —…

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How iRobot lost its way home

How iRobot lost its way home

There’s something painfully American about the arc of iRobot, the company that taught your vacuum to navigate around the furniture. Founded in 1990 in Bedford, Massachusetts by MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks and his former students Colin Angle and Helen Greiner, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday, punctuating a 35-year run that took…

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Digital artist Beeple put his face on a 0K robot dog next to Elon Musk and Picasso – it sold first

Digital artist Beeple put his face on a $100K robot dog next to Elon Musk and Picasso – it sold first

Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple, has placed himself at the center of the pack — literally — with his latest viral installation at Art Basel Miami Beach, and there’s still time to see it through Sunday. His “Regular Animals” project features $100,000 robotic dogs outfitted with hyper-realistic heads resembling Elon Musk, Mark…

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Behind the scenes of drone food delivery in Finland

Behind the scenes of drone food delivery in Finland

Finland’s weather is notoriously unfriendly; but even so, your food order might be delivered by a drone. On a rainy day after Helsinki’s annual Slush conference, Finnish entrepreneur Ville Leppälä took TechCrunch behind the scenes of a three-party partnership between Irish drone delivery company Manna, DoorDash-owned food delivery platform Wolt, and his own startup, Huuva….

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