Wearable devices that help blind people navigate and a recycling station that reclaims plastics are some of the projects Pittsburgh can look forward to thanks to the newest cohort of the Robotics Factory’s Accelerate program.After the completion of its first run, the Robotics Factory recently announced its second cohort for the program. Five companies — ForSight Assistive Devices, HeadStraitLabs, Humotech, Journey Robotics, and Reclamation Factory — will get up to $100,000 in investment, six months of structured programming and content, personalized one-on-one time with industry experts and network-building opportunities. Additionally, they will have access to 12 months of office space at Robotics Factory’s Lawrenceville facility. Beyond the tech, the support encompasses areas like finance, intellectual property, and sales and marketing are critical areas for fledgling companies, Kevin Dowling, managing director of Robotics Factory, told Technical.ly.“When entrepreneurs fall in love with their technology, it is often not a good sign because the technology is more attractive than the problem, but the problem is more important than the technology,” Dowling said.This philosophy underpins the work at the accelerator program designed to support robotics startups. It offers capital, mentorship, and resources for entrepreneurs, funded by a $63 million Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration.A broad definition of robotics applies to many fieldsThe Robotics Factory program begins with a rigorous selection process. It focuses on companies rooted in Southwestern Pennsylvania with a viable product concept, a detailed plan for a product that addresses a market need, or minimum viable product, the most basic version of a product that can still be released to customers. “We look for companies with a local base and a basic understanding of their market,” Dowling said.Of course, given the title of the program, the company also has to be connected to robotics. That could mean a lot of different things though.“We have a broad definition of robotics,” Dowling said

Earlier this year, ActiveMedia, Inc. worked with Everyday Robots to demonstrate that integrating a powerful language model such as PaLM into a robot learning model could not only enable people to communicate with a robot — but also improve the robot’s overall performance.