A startup robotics company called Iron Ox opened its first production facility in San Carlos, California on Oct. 3. The company’s 8,000-square-foot indoor hydroponic facility is attached to its offices, and will produce leafy greens at a rate of roughly 26,000 heads a year, which is the production level of a typical outdoor farm that might be five times bigger, according to MIT Technology Review. Iron Ox has 15 human employees that share their work space with robots that tend rows of leafy greens. Robotic arms individually pluck the plants from their hydroponic trays and transfer them to new trays as they increase in size, which maximizes their health and output. Robotic movers carry the 800-pound water-filled trays around the facility.

Last month, Northrop Grumman Corporation and its industry partners participated in the U.S. Navy’s Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX). During ANTX, Northrop Grumman and its partners, which included Physical Optics Corp, Ultra Electronics USSI, Hydroid, Optimum Solutions and Silvus, not only demonstrated advanced capabilities in the “command and control of future unmanned maritime missions,” but they also demonstrated the ability to better deliver important information to the warfighter in contested environments.

Lockheed Martin and the Drone Racing League (DRL) recently announced an innovation competition that will challenge participants to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology that enables an autonomous UAS to not only race a pilot-operated UAS, but win. Known as the AlphaPilot Innovation Challenge, the competition will see participating teams, made up of university students, technologists, coders and UAS enthusiasts, compete in a series of challenges for their share of over $2 million in prizes, as they seek to “push the boundaries of AI, machine learning (ML) and fully autonomous flight.”

The U.S. Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) has awarded Robotic Research a five-year $50 million contract for Autonomous Unmanned Systems Teaming & Collaboration (AUSTC) for the Counter-WMD Mission in challenging subterranean and other environments. Robotic Research is a Maryland-based engineering and technology company that provides autonomy software and robotic technology to several Federal and commercial customers.   AUSTC builds on prior and ongoing Robotic Research Small Business Innovative Research contracts—also with ARDEC—in support of the Mobile Autonomous Counter-WMD System, Increment B (MACS-B).