Business
Exclusive: Airrow is automating battery and payload swapping for drones
#Airrow #automating #battery #payload #swapping #drones
Any given year, the real unsung highlight of re:Mars are the dozen or so startups and researchers who show off their wares on the show floor. There are always a couple of cool projects that have somehow managed to escape our radar, thus far. Los Angeles-based Airrow jumped out with a clever product offering.
The startup makes a device designed to automatically remove and replace batteries and payloads for drones. It operates similarly to a CNC machine or 3D printer, with a gantry that moves along X- and Y-axes to get the battery from the charger to the drone and back again.
The process is currently a manual one, requiring a human to swap and replace. It’s only slightly inconvenient one to one but can become a major hassle when scaling up, like, say, in the case of drone-based food delivery programs.
The system is still in very early stages. The team was showcasing battery swaps at the event and is currently working on extending the process out to payloads. Currently a swap takes a full two minutes, beginning to end, but Airrow is working to get it down to around 30 seconds. One thing at a time for a small team that currently consists of five employees. Expanding headcount is a big part of the company’s plans as it looks to raise its next round, adding to the $350,000 pre-seed it’s picked up, thus far.
In addition to delivery applications, military use is a key potential customer here. After all, they need drones and have deep pockets when it comes to investing in technological solutions. Founder and CEO Menachem Fehler tells me that the company has thus far been in talks with the Navy SEALs about potential deployments, which could help keep drones constantly in the air. Airrow has also spoken with numerous law enforcement organizations.
The solution doesn’t come cheap. The startup is currently looking at a price point of between $80,000-$100,000 for a bundle that also includes a drone.
“At this stage, we’re still looking at what’s the best approach, but we want to deliver the end-to-end solution,” Fehler tells TechCrunch. The company will also customize the system to work with different drones to meet a customer’s specific needs.
Business
Exclusive: Biden opens the possibility of more offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico – TalkOfNews.com
#Biden #opens #possibility #offshore #oil #drilling #Gulf #Mexico
An oil and gas drilling platform stands offshore as waves churned from Tropical Storm Karen come ashore in Dauphin Island, Alabama, October 5, 2013.
Steve Nesius | Reuters
The Biden administration released a five-year offshore oil and gas drilling development plan on Friday that would block all new drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans within U.S. waters, but would allow some lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and the south coast of Alaska.
The proposed plan, which has not been finalized, could allow up to 11 lease sales over the next five years. It also includes an option for the administration to conduct no sales. The Department of the Interior is inviting the public to comment on the program.
Biden had vowed to suspend all new federal drilling on public lands and waters, but that position resulted in legal challenges from several Republican-led states and the oil sector.
As U.S. energy prices rise, the fossil fuel sector has urged the administration to increase offshore drilling in an effort to lower gas prices at the pump. But climate groups have argued that new lease sales would exacerbate climate change while doing nothing to bring down prices.
A recent report published by Apogee Economics and Policy said that a temporary suspension in new offshore oil and gas sales would have minimal impact on gas prices for consumers — with prices edging up by less than 1 cent per gallon over the next nearly two decades.
“From Day One, President Biden and I have made clear our commitment to transition to a clean energy economy,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement on Friday. “Today, we put forward an opportunity for the American people to consider and provide input on the future of offshore oil and gas leasing.”
The Interior’s most recent offshore oil and gas auction was in November in the Gulf of Mexico. A court order later vacated the sale, arguing the administration didn’t adequately account for the harm to the environment and impact on climate change.
Nearly 95% of U.S. offshore oil production and 71% of offshore natural gas production occurs in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Roughly 15% of oil production in the U.S. comes from offshore drilling.
Environmental groups on Friday condemned the administration for proposing limited new lease sales instead of announcing a ban on all new drilling.
“The Biden administration had an opportunity to meet the moment on climate and end new offshore oil leasing in Interior’s five-year program,” said Drew Caputo, vice president of litigation at Earthjustice. “Instead, its proposal to serve up a bunch of new offshore oil lease sales is a failure of climate leadership and a breach of their climate promises.”
Environmental groups have also argued that new leasing would impede the White House’s goal to slash carbon emissions by at least 50% by 2030 in an effort to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“This draft plan falls short of what we desperately need: an end to new oil and gas drilling in federal waters,” Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter said in a statement. “President Biden has called the climate crisis the existential threat of our time, but the administration continues to pursue policies that will only make it worse.”
#Simple #Exercise #Turn #Failure #Success
If you want your business or your career to be a big success, rather than focusing only on the positive, you should also look closely at your failures. In fact, you should write those failures up and create a “rejection resume.” That advice comes from Eli Joseph, Ph.D., faculty member at Columbia University and Queens College and author of The Perfect Rejection Resume.
A rejection resume is straightforward to create, as he explains in his book. Ask yourself the same questions you’d answer in a traditional resume–but in reverse. Instead of saying where you graduated from, list the schools you applied to but didn’t get into, or the ones you dropped out of, or the courses you failed. Instead of listing the jobs you succeeded at, describe the ones you were fired from, the projects that crashed and burned, and the biggest mistakes you made. The result will be a brief document, a few pages long or maybe just one page, that contains a record of your biggest disappointments, and the biggest mistakes you’ve made.
What’s the purpose of the rejection resume? “Most people do not like to talk about their failures and how many organizations rejected them or how many venture capitalists rejected their proposals,” Joseph explains. “So it’s just a conversation starter.” That is, it can help you start a conversation with yourself. “To say, hey I have this document, and I can take advantage of these lessons.”
Here are some ways a rejection resume can benefit you.
1. It can help you turn current failures into future successes.
“As you’re building a business, you can write down, ‘I failed today at this task, and it was partially detrimental for now, but I’ve learned from my mistake.’ And look around as you go along.” With this approach, the rejection resume can become a powerful motivational tool, he says, because if you look at your failure, you may be able to see the mistakes that led you there. And you can choose not to make those mistakes in the future.
2. It can let you see how far you’ve come.
Anytime is a great time to create a rejection resume, Joseph says, but it’s an especially useful thing to do if you’ve suffered a disheartening setback. “It’s the one that stings a little bit, and you know, that’s what we need to harp on and focus on. So we can bookmark that time that we felt down from a particular failure, but we’ve rebounded.”
His comment makes me think about my attempt, decades ago, to work as a business reporter for a daily newspaper, the only job from which I’ve ever been fired. I hated the job and was actually delighted to leave it, but it also felt like a colossal failure. With hindsight I can see that it was completely the wrong fit for me and how losing that job was in many ways a piece of very good luck.
3. It will help you connect with others.
“People always love a comeback story,” Joseph says. You may prefer to focus on your successes, but in fact, you almost certainly have your own comeback story and your own history of failure before success, he says. “And people always love that. They love the underdog.”
This is why, he says, if you share part of your rejection resume story on social media, it’s likely to get a lot of attention. “It’s a good marketing tool,” he says. “People who do speaking engagements and keynotes tend to reel the audience in through their personal endeavors and how they’ve overcome failure.” The rejection resume can help you organize that information so you can help others learn from your experiences, he said.
There’s a growing audience of Inc.com readers who receive a daily text from me with a self-care or motivational micro-challenge or tip. (Interested in joining? Here’s more information and an invitation to an extended free trial.) Many are entrepreneurs or business leaders and many have told me about how even devastating failures have helped lead them build bigger, more meaningful successes. Seeing your failures as something to be commemorated in a rejection resume can be a great start.
#Mystery #rocket #moonfall
Hello and welcome back to Week in Review, where we recap the biggest stories from the week. If you want this in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here.
Greg Kumparak is still on vacation, but not to worry! He’ll be back at the helm next week to bring you our biggest stories. Until then, I’ve got you covered.
First for some quick business. TechCrunch+ is having an Independence Day sale, which gets you 50% off on an annual subscription. Need more? TC+ Editor-in-Chief Alex Wilhelm gives you all the reasons to take the plunge here.
Okay let’s go to the moon! Yes, the moon. Some space junk crashed to the lunar surface this week, causing some enthusiastic observers to scratch their heads. Was it from SpaceX? Was it from a rocket launched in 2014 by the China National Space Administration? We still don’t know, but Devin Coldewey had a chat with Darren McKnight from LeoLabs, which has built a network of debris-tracking radar, to get some more insight.
Image Credits: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University
other stuff
Speaking of space: Ever want to stare longingly into the depths of the universe and actually have something stare back? This is supposed to happen in two weeks when the James Webb Space Telescope will release its first images. “This is farther than humanity has ever looked before,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said during a media briefing this week. Maybe the truth is out there.
Tesla Autopilot layoffs: The automaker this week laid off 195 employees across two offices in its Autopilot division. Those who were laid off filled supervisor, labeler and data analyst roles. Questions persist about what impact the layoffs will have on Tesla’s wider advanced driver assistance system. The remaining 81 staffers on the Autopilot team will be relocated to another office, as the San Mateo office will be shuttered.
SPAC subpoenas: A New York-based federal grand jury sent subpoenas to the board of Digital World, which is preparing to acquire Trump Media & Technology Group, Donald Trump’s media group responsible for Truth Social. According to an SEC filing, the subpoenas are an effort to gather more information about “Digital World’s S-1 filings, communications with or about multiple individuals, and information regarding Rocket One Capital.”
Deepfake job apps: The FBI this week issued a warning that deepfakes are being used along with stolen information to apply for jobs. A part of this even involves video interviews. “In these interviews, the actions and lip movement of the person seen interviewed on-camera do not completely coordinate with the audio of the person speaking. At times, actions such as coughing, sneezing, or other auditory actions are not aligned with what is presented visually,” the FBI said in a statement announcing the disturbing news.
Party pooper: Welp, that 2020-era indefinite ban on unauthorized parties at Airbnbs is now permanent. This means no open-invitation parties and no parties whose attendance exceeds 16. The company said in a blog post that since they instituted the ban 2 years ago, there was a 44% year-over-year decrease in the rate of party reports. There will be no partying on, Garth.
Image Credits: DrAfter123 / Getty Images
audio stuff
Over on the TechCrunch Podcast Network, Christine Tao, founder of Sounding Board, joined Darrell and Jordan on Found to talk about difficulties she and her co-founder faced while fundraising and how they established the customer type that made scaling possible.
And on the Wednesday episode of Equity, Natasha Mascarenhas asked a question inspired by a recent post penned by TC’s own Rebecca Szkutak: What’s in the fine print for term sheets these days, and what does that tell us about who is going to be in control during the downturn?
Check out our full roundup.
added stuff
Want even more TechCrunch? Head on over to the aptly named TechCrunch+, where we get to go a bit deeper on the topics our subscribers tell us they care about. Some of the good stuff from this week includes:
The SEC rejected bitcoin spot ETFs again. Now what?
The SEC’s decisions aren’t a first for the industry; the government agency has denied over a dozen bitcoin spot ETFs in the past year alone while approving several bitcoin future-based ETFs, Jacquelyn Melinek reports.
Disclose your Scope 3 emissions, you cowards
Tim De Chant takes on the companies that claim they’re serious about carbon emissions. In short, if they’re serious, then they’ll estimate their Scope 3 emissions and not undermine attempts to make Scope 3 disclosures standard.
Pitch Deck Teardown: Wilco’s $7 million seed deck
Haje’s back with another pitch deck teardown, this week from Wilco, a company whose funding he covered last week. He is pretty excited about Wilco’s deck, as, he says, it’s 19 slides that tick all of the boxes.
Exclusive: United saddened as Andy Goram passes away – TalkOfNews.com
Exclusive: Marjorie Taylor Greene Says Putin Just Wants To Be Our Friend And Ally – TalkOfNews.com
Exclusive: Biden opens the possibility of more offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico – TalkOfNews.com
Exclusive: “Elsa Pataky is awesomeness personified”: ‘Interceptor’ Director and Pataky Herself Takes Us Behind the Scenes of the #1 Netflix Movie
Exclusive: "The Black Phone" Review: A New Horror Film Starring Ethan Hawke As A Serial Child Killer – TalkOfNews.com
Exclusive: Oops! Patriot Front Member Was Arrested in Idaho Carrying Megaphone Marked “FBI”
-
Cinema & Celebrities3 weeks agoExclusive: “Elsa Pataky is awesomeness personified”: ‘Interceptor’ Director and Pataky Herself Takes Us Behind the Scenes of the #1 Netflix Movie
-
Entertainment1 week agoExclusive: "The Black Phone" Review: A New Horror Film Starring Ethan Hawke As A Serial Child Killer – TalkOfNews.com
-
Politics3 weeks agoExclusive: Oops! Patriot Front Member Was Arrested in Idaho Carrying Megaphone Marked “FBI”
-
Fashion2 weeks agoExclusive: The Best Fashion Moments From Sitcom "Martin"'s 30-Year Reunion Special
-
Cinema & Celebrities3 weeks agoExclusive: Joseph Quinn Calls Stranger Things’ Eddie Munson “a real lottery ticket”, Reveals Why He “stopped eating pizza and drinking beer”
-
Cinema & Celebrities3 weeks agoExclusive: Netflix Going ‘Harry Potter’ With ‘The School for Good and Evil’? First Teaser Transports Sophie and Agatha to School
-
Cinema & Celebrities2 weeks agoExclusive: ‘The Umbrella Academy’ Season 3 Release Date and Time in Your Country and Region
-
Politics3 weeks agoExclusive: Another Blow to the US Food Market: Fire Breaks Out at a Food Processing Plant West of Waupaca County in Wisconsin