Robot Makers Fill Their War Chests in Fight Against Amazon

I am starting to get annoyed by the overloaded term "robot." This article is really about automated warehouses. That is interesting, but is sufficiently advanced automation truly robotics? If so, where does it cross that line? Many hobbyist "robotics" (think BattleBots) are just remote-controlled vehicles. Neither have autonomous behavior. It'd be nice to have terms for each but I can't think of what would be appropriate.

Genuine question — is $70 million, spread across +4 different competing companies, a lot of money, for an industry like robot makers?<p>Or, said another way, if the article had said the companies collectively raised $700 million, I don’t think I would’ve been surprised.<p>Can someone provide context?

$70 million is not competition for Amazon, $700 million is almost a rounding error in this context

This is what I think no one will be able to compete with amazon on warehouse logistics. Kiva&#x27;s model of bringing the shelf to the picker is hard to improve upon. And it is probably patented.

Sounds like another race to the bottom.