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Robotics Startup Vicarious Launches After 10 Years

By
Kevin McLaughlin
· · Source: The Information

Vicarious, a 10-year-old robotics company backed by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, has launched its first commercial service, in which it rents robots to companies like Sephora, which uses them to sort cosmetics into boxes, Wired reported .  The launch represents a departure from existing warehouse robots that use deep learning, a form of AI that has yielded breakthroughs in image...

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Mixed hydroxide precipitate, the go-to feedstock for battery nickel sulfate, on a conveyor belt at Indonesia's Harita Group, which pioneered the process. Photo: Dimas Ardian/Bloomberg
For much of the last century, metals companies have made stainless steel from nickel mined in Russia or the Philippines and smelted at temperatures up to 2,900 degrees. But demand for nickel is outstripping supplies because the metal is a key component in most electric vehicle batteries. So metals producers have turned to a new supplier—Indonesia, which possesses vast reserves of a previously...
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