Robohub Podcast: Recent Episodes
Robohub Podcast
Dr. Tyler Reid, CTO of Xona Space Systems, discusses a new approach to global navigation satellite systems designed for self-driving cars.
Areeb, the co-founder of Glacier, gives some insight into the opaque recycling industry, and why it is unable to handle the volume of recyclable good Americans through out each year.
Deep Learning Indaba is an organization that empowers and builds communities around Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning across Africa. Benjamin Rosman dives into how Deep Learning Indaba is impacting these communities.
Prof Brendan Englot, from Stevens Institute of Technology, discusses the challenges in perception and decision making for underwater robots - especially in the field.
Brady Watkins gives insights into how a large company like Softbank Robotics approaches the Robotics market
Brandon Gilles, the founder of Luxonis and maker of the OAK-D, describes the journey and the flexibility of the OAK-D line of products
Dr. Sihao Sun on his research for controlling a quadcopter after one of its rotors faces a sudden failure. His research takes in real-world assumptions where the quadcopter may already be in a compromised, difficult to correct orientation.
John McConnell discusses the research presented at ICRA 2022 to reduce drift in SLAM algorithms by incorporating overhead satellite imagery.
Sebastian Scherer from CMU's Airlab gives us a behind-the-scenes demo at ICRA of their Autonomous Flight Control AI. Their approach aims to cooperate with human pilots and act the way they would.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPsJ4ArdtTk
The team took this approach to create a more natural, less intrusive process for co-habiting human and AI pilots at a single airport. They describe it as a Turing Test, where ideally the human pilot will be unable to distinguish an AI from a person operating the plane.
Their communication system works parallel with a 6-camera hardware package based on the Nvidia AGX Dev Kit. This kit measures the angular speed of objects flying across the videos.
In this world, high angular velocity means low risk -- since the object is flying at a fast speed perpendicular to the camera plane.
Low angular velocity indicates high risk since the object could be flying directly at the plane, headed for a collision.
Links
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Bill Smart, one fo the early ICRA Competition Chairs, dives into the high-level decisions involved with creating a meaningful competition.
Yu Sun, previous chair of the Robotics Grasping and Manipulation Competition, speaks on the value that this competition brought to the robotics community.
Dr. Liam Paull, cofounder of the Duckietown competition talks about the only robotics competition where Rubber Duckies are the passengers on an autonomous driving track.
Dr. Carolyn Matl, Research Scientist at Toyota Research Institute, explains why Interactive Perception and soft tactile sensors are critical for manipulating challenging objects such as liquids, grains, and dough.
Joe Speed, VP of Product at ApexAI, dives into the current multi-year development process of bringing a car to market, and how ApexAI will transform this process into the shorter development time we see with modern technology.
Rob Telson dives into the Akida Neural Processor from BrainChip, which is mimicking the five senses from the human brain on a low-powered chip.
Davide Scaramuzza deep dives into Event Cameras, a fundamentally new approach to capturing visual data
Suma Reddy discusses crop transportation with autonomous mobile robots made by Future Acres.
Oleg Shipitko discusses Evocargo's approach to transform the way we transport goods within facilities such as ports and warehouses.
Jakob Foerster, an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, dives into his work on multi-agent reinforcement learning.
Torrey Smith discusses a robot you swallow that livestreams your digestive system for medical procedures such as endoscopies.
Schneider, PhD Candidate at Stanford, explains her work on Reachbot, a long-reach crawling and anchoring robot repurposes extendable booms for mobile manipulation in Outer Space. They discuss the challenges and exciting elements of robotic prototyping for low-gravity or otherwise unique environments.
Brad Bogolea discusses the innovation behind Tally, the autonomous robot from Simbe Robotics. Tally collects real-time analytics inside retail stores to improve the customer shopping experience, as well as the efficiency of managing the store.
Amit Goel, Director of Product Management for Autonomous Machines at NVIDIA, discusses the new collaboration between Open Robotics and NVIDIA. The collaboration will dramatically improve the way ROS and NVIDIA's line of products such as Isaac SIM and the Jetson line of embedded boards operate together.
In this episode, our interviewer Lilly speaks to Alex Wallar, co-founder and CTO of The Routing Company. Wallar shares his background in multi-robot path-planning and optimization, and his research on scheduling and routing algorithms for high-capacity ride-sharing.
Robohub Podcast · Marsupial Robots
Lilly interviews Chris Lee, a graduate student at Oregon State University. Lee explains his research on marsupial robots, or carrier-passenger pairs of heterogeneous robot systems. They discuss the possible applications of marsupial robots including the DARPA Subterranean Competition, and some of the technical challenges including optimal deployment formulated as a stochastic assignment problem.
Robohub Podcast · Autonomously Mapping the Seafloor
Anthony DiMare and Charles Chiau deep dive into how Bedrock Ocean is innovating in the world of Marine Surveys. At Bedrock Ocean, they are developing an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) that is able to map the seafloor autonomously and at a high resolution. They are also developing a data platform to access, process, and visualize data captured from other companies at the seafloor.
Bedrock Ocean is solving two problems in the industry of Marine Surveying. 1. The vast majority of the seafloor is completely unmapped 2. The data that is captured from the seafloor is not standardized or centralized.
Seafloor data conducted by two different companies with the same or different hardware to capture the data can vary significantly in the calculated seafloor profile
Anthony DiMare Anthony previously founded Nautilus Labs, a leading maritime technology company advancing the efficiency of ocean commerce through artificial intelligence. While at Nautilus, Anthony helped global companies solve challenges with distributed, siloed maritime data systems and built the early team that launched Nautilus Platform into large publicly listed shipping companies.
Charles Chiau Charles, Bedrock’s CTO, was previously at SpaceX where he helped design the avionics systems for Crew Dragon. He also was a system integration engineer at Reliable Robotics working on their autonomous aviation system and was the CTO of DeepFlight where he worked on manned submersibles including ones for Tom Perkins, Richard Branson, and Steve Fossett.
Links
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Robohub Podcast · Mobile Outdoor Manipulation with RE2 Robotics
In this episode, Shihan Lu interviews Travis Schneider, Business Development Manager at RE2 Robotics, focusing on their work on mobile outdoor manipulation. Travis introduces several robotic products and services of RE2, including RE2 Sapien robotic arms and human-centered system integration, and how they can be used to help rather than replace workers. He also shares his thoughts about challenges in human-robot collaboration.
Robohub Podcast · Autonomous Aircraft
Abate talks to Maxime Gariel, CTO of Xwing about the autonomous flight technology they are developing.
At Xwing, they are converting traditional aircraft into remotely operated aircraft. They do this by retrofitting planes with multiple sensors including cameras, radar, and lidar, and by developing sensor fusion algorithms to allow their planes to understand the world around them, using highly accurate perception algorithms.
Xwing’s autonomous flight technology allows a plane to taxi in the airport, takeoff, fly to a destination, avoid airborne and ground threats, and land, all without any human input. This technology not only enables autonomous flight but may also enhance the safety of manned aircraft by improving a plane's ability to understand its surroundings.
Robohub Podcast · Intel RealSense Enabling Computer Vision and Machine Learning At The Edge
Intel RealSense is known in the robotics community for its plug-and-play stereo cameras. These cameras make gathering 3D depth data a seamless process, with easy integrations into ROS to simplify the software development for your robots. From the RealSense team, Joel Hagberg talks about how they built this product, which allows roboticists to perform computer vision and machine learning at the edge.
Robohub Podcast · Snake-like Robot as a Worker Companion - FLX BOT
Matt Bilsky, founder and CEO of FLX Solutions, discusses the snake-like robot he invented called the FLX BOT. The FLX BOT consists of modular links, each with a joint that can extend and rotate to get into tight spaces. Each link includes sensors including inertial measurement units and a camera. The robot is used to navigate and work in challenging environments, such as above ceilings and within walls. Matt discusses the key innovations of his product as well as his academic and entrepreneurial journey that led him to the FLX BOT.
Robohub Podcast · Swarms in Space
In this episode, Lilly interviews Giovanni Beltrame, Professor of Computer and Software Engineering at École Polytechnique de Montréal where he directs the Making Innovative Space Technology (MIST) lab. Beltrame highlights the technical challenges of exploring another planet with a swarm of robots controlled by an astronaut operator. They discuss minimizing cognitive load for the operator, analog missions to volcanic lava tubes on Earth, and spherical hopping robots for the moon.
Robohub Podcast · Multi-Robot Learning
In this episode, Lilly interviews Amanda Prorok, Professor of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge. Prorok discusses her research on multi-robot and multi-agent systems and learning coordination policies via Graph Neural Networks. They dig into her recent work on self-interested robots and finding explainability in emergent behavior.
Robohub Podcast · Construction Site Automation
Abate interviews Tessa Lau on her startup Dusty Robotics which is innovating in the field of construction.
At Dusty Robotics, they developed a robot to automate the laying of floor plans on the floors in construction sites. Typically, this is done manually using a tape measure and reading printed out plans. This difficult task can often take a team of two a week to complete. Time-consuming tasks like this are incredibly expensive on a construction site where multiple different teams are waiting on this task to complete. Any errors in this process are even more time-consuming to fix. By using a robot to automatically convert 3d models of building plans into markings on the floors, the amount of time and errors are dramatically reduced.
Robohub Podcast · Robots-as-a-Service
In this episode, Lilly interviews Afshin Doust, CEO of Advanced Intelligent Systems. Doust explains the company’s modular, robots-as-a-service subscription business model. They discuss robotic solutions for the agricultural industry, disinfecting robots to combat COVID19, and other exciting new developments at AIS.
Robohub Podcast · Inside Cybathlon
Kate speaks with Anni Kern, Head of Communication, strategy, and teams at Cybathlon for over four years. She describes the motivation and concepts for the Cybathlon organizations to develop a common platform to remove barriers between people with disabilities, technology developers, and the public. Anni also describes the specifics of Cybathlon competitions and the organization and planning.
Robohub Podcast · Computational Design
Lilly interviews Bernhard Thomaszewski, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Montréal and research scientist at ETH Zurich. Thomaszewski discusses his background in animation at Disney, his current work on mechanical metamaterials and digital fabrication, and how physics-based modeling has connected the dots.
Robohub Podcast · Deep Sea Mining
In this episode, Abate follows up with Benjamin Pietro Filardo, founder of Pliant Energy Systems and NACROM, the North American Consortium for Responsible Ocean Mining. Pietro talks about the deep sea mining industry, an untapped market with a massive potential for growth. Pietro discusses the current proposed solutions for deep sea mining which are environmentally destructive, and he offers an alternative solution using swarm robots which could mine the depths of the ocean while creating minimal disturbance to this mysterious habitat.
Robohub Podcast · The Advantage of Fins
Abate interviews Benjamin "Pietro" Filardo, CEO and founder of Pliant Energy Systems. At PES, they developed a novel form of actuation using two undulating fins on a robot. These fins present multiple benefits over traditional propeller systems including excellent energy efficiency, low water turbulence, and an ability to maneuver in water, land, and ice. Aside from its benefits on a robot, Pietro also talks about its advantages for harnessing energy from moving water.
Watch this episode on YouTube
Robohub Podcast · Embodied Interactions: from Robotics to Dance
In this episode, our interviewer Lauren Klein speaks with Kim Baraka about his PhD research to enable robots to engage in social interactions, including interactions with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Baraka discusses how robots can plan their actions across multiple modalities when interacting with humans, and how models from psychology can inform this process. He also tells us about his passion for dance, and how dance may serve as a testbed for embodied intelligence within Human-Robot Interaction.
Robohub Podcast · Multisensory Perception
In this episode, Shihan Lu interviews Jivko Sinapov, Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Tufts University, about his work on behavior-grounded multisensory perception and exploration in robotics. Dr. Sinapov discusses several perspectives on multisensory perception in robotics, including data collection, data fusion, and robot control and planning. He also shares his experience about using robotics for K-12 education.
Robohub Podcast · Exploring Venus with a Clockwork Rover
In this episode, Lilly interviews Jonathan Sauder, the Principal Investigator of a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts project to design a rover for the surface of Venus. Sauder explains why exploring Venus is important and why previous surface missions have only lasted a few hours. They discuss his innovative wheeled-robot concept, a hybrid automaton rover which would be mostly mechanical and powered by wind.
Robohub Podcast · Empowering Farmers Through Root AI
In this episode, Abate interviews Josh Lessing, co-founder and CEO of Root AI. At Root AI they are developing a system that tracks data on the farm and autonomously harvests crops using delicate grippers and computer vision. Lessing talks about the path they took to build a product with good market fit and how they brought a venture capital backed startup to market.
Robohub Podcast · Planetary Drilling
In this episode, Lilly Clark interviews Kris Zacny, the Vice President of Exploration Technologies at Honeybee Robotics. They discuss two focuses of development at Honeybee: technology for finding extinct extraterrestrial life and technology for in-situ resource utilization. Zacny speaks about the design and operation of current flight projects, and why drilling technology is key to these missions.
Robohub Podcast · Micro-scale Surgical Robots
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Eric Diller, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, on wireless micro-scale robots that could eventually be used in human surgery. Diller speaks about the design, control, and manufacture of micro-scale surgical robotic devices, as well as when we might see this technology in the operating room.
Robohub Podcast · Humanized Intelligence in Academia and Industry
In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Ayanna Howard, Professor and Chair of the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Professor Howard describes her wide range of work in robotics, from robots that assist children with special needs to trust in autonomous systems. She also discusses her path through the field of robotics in both academia and business, and the importance of conducting in-the-wild robotics research.
Robohub Podcast · Environmental Monitoring with the SlothBot
In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Gennaro Notimista, a robotics PhD student in the Georgia Robotics and InTelligent Systems Laboratory at Georgia Tech. Gennaro discusses the SlothBot, a solar-powered robot that slowly traverses wires, like its animal namesake, to monitor the environment.
Robohub Podcast · Introspective Robots
In this episode, Lilly interviews Nathan Michael, Professor and Director of the Resilient Intelligent Systems Lab at the Robotics Institute within Carnegie Mellon University. They discuss introspection, adaptation, and evolvement in robotics. Michael speaks about topics in state estimation and distributed perception, and other challenges in control, perception, and cognition for both single and multi-robot systems.
Robohub Podcast · Exploring From a Distance
In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Muralidharan Arikara, CEO of Xarpie Labs. Xarpie Labs creates visualization and simulation experiences within the retail, healthcare, and defense industries. Arikara describes how Xarpie Labs grew as part of the Machani Group, which has decades of experience in automotive manufacturing, into an innovator in virtual and augmented reality. He elaborates on the role of Xarpie Lab’s virtual reality and augmented reality experiences in allowing real estate customers a vision of properties from a distance. Arikara also paints a picture of Xarpie Labs’ augmented reality tools, including a project for a museum to visualize old gramophones for visitors and an air conditioning troubleshooting tool for technicians.
Robohub Podcast · High Earth Orbit Robotics
In this episode, Lilly interviews Dr. William Crowe, CEO of High Earth Orbit (HEO) Robotics. The mission of HEO Robotics is to provide high quality imagery of satellites, space-debris and resource-rich asteroids. Crowe discusses the technical challenges which make robotics and satellites similar like computer vision and controls, and those where traditional robotics approaches aren’t suitable like localization and mobility. He explains new trends in the satellite industry, and the need for high quality imagery.
Robohub Podcast · Solid State Lidar - The 3D Camera
In this episode, Abate interviews Erin Bishop from Sense Photonics about the technology in their “Solid State” LiDAR sensors that allows them to detect objects more accurately and over a larger field of view than traditional scanning LiDAR. Erin dives into the technical details of Solid State Lidar, discusses the applications and industries of the technology.
Robohub Podcast · Safe Motion Planning in Real-time
In this episode, we hear from Luca Colasanto, Senior Robotic Scientist at Realtime Robotics, about real-time robot motion planning in dynamic and complex environments with human-robot collaboration. Realtime Robotics focuses on accelerating conventional motion planning through optimization of algorithms and hardware to allow safe use of robotic tools in work areas with humans. Luca spoke to our interviewer Kate about Realtime Robotic’s fast motion planning technology, including key aspects, such as perception, algorithms and custom hardware.
Robohub Podcast · Robotics Manipulation with MoveIt
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Dave Coleman, CEO of PickNik Robotics, about the open source robotics manipulation platform called MoveIt. Coleman talks about MoveIt's story, from inception and the early days to development and maintenance, as well as how MoveIt relates to the Robot Operating System (ROS) and their move to support ROS-2. He also speaks about MoveIt's implementation, including global versus local planners and what that means. Coleman concludes by talking about World MoveIt Day and how those interested can begin learning MoveIt and contributing.
In this episode, Kate Zhou interviews Farrell Helbling, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Microrobotics lab, who has worked on developing the RoboBee, an insect-inspired robot that is the lightest vehicle to achieve untethered flight. Farrell discusses challenges with building the robot at centimeter-scale as well as integration of sensors and power electronics particularly in considerations with weight trade-offs.
In this episode, Lilly Clark interviews Jeannette Bohg, Assistant Professor at Stanford, about her work in interactive perception and robot learning for grasping and manipulation tasks. Bohg discusses how robots and humans are different, the challenge of high dimensional data, and unsolved problems including continuous learning and decentralized manipulation.
Robohub Podcast · Seeing like a Rover
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Janet Vertessi, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Princeton, on her book Seeing Like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars. The book is written about her experience living and working with NASA's Mars Rover team, and includes her observations about the team’s leadership and their relationship with their robot millions of miles away on Mars. She also gives some advice from her findings for teams.
In this episode, Lilly interviews Kajal Gada on her work at BrainCorp, the San Diego-based company behind BrainOS, a technology stack for autonomous solutions. Kajal discusses BrainCorp’s cloud-connected operating system and their floor cleaning, vacuuming, and warehouse delivery robots. She also articulates some of the challenges in becoming a software engineer and developing commercial solutions.
In this episode, Abate interviews David Mindell, co-founder of Humatics. David discusses a system they developed that can detect the location of a special tracking device down to a centimeter level accuracy. They are currently developing a device to detect location down to a millimeter level accuracy. This solves a the core problem of localization for robots. David discusses the technology behind these products and their applications.
In this interview, Lilly interviews Vijay Kumar, Professor and Dean at the University of Pennsylvania. He discusses coordination, cooperation, and collaboration in multi-robot systems. He also explains where he draws inspiration from in his research, and why robotics has yet to meet science fiction.
In this episode, Shihan Lu interviews Dr. Heather Culbertson, Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California, about her work in haptics. Dr. Culbertson discusses the data-driven realistic texture modeling and rendering, haptic technologies in the social touch, the combination of haptics and robots, expectations and obstacles of haptics in the next 5 years.
In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Human-Robot Interaction researcher Patrícia Alves-Oliveira. Alves-Oliveira tells us about the upcoming RSS Pioneers workshop at the 2020 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference; the workshop brings senior PhD students and postdoctoral researchers together to collaborate and discuss their work with distinguished members of the robotics field. She also describes her own research designing robots to encourage creativity in children.
In this episode, Lilly interviews Juxi Leitner, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Queensland University of Technology and Co-Founder/CEO of LYRO Robotics. LYRO spun out of the 2017 win of the Amazon Robotics Challenge by Team ACRV. Here Juxi discusses deep learning, computer vision, intent in grasping and manipulation, and bridging the gap between abstract and low-level understandings of the world. He also discusses why robotics is really an integration field, the Amazon and other robotics challenges, and what’s important to consider when spinning an idea into a company.
In this episode, our interviewer Audrow Nash speaks to Gil Weinberg, Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Music and the founding director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology. Weinberg leads a research lab called the Robotic Musicianship group, which focuses on developing artificial creativity and musical expression for robots and on augmented humans. Weinberg discusses several of his improvisational robots and how they work, including Shimon, a multi-armed robot marimba player, as well as his work in prosthetic devices for musicians.
Welcome to the 300th episode of the Robohub podcast! You might not know that the podcast has been going in one form or another for 14 years. Originally called “Talking Robots,” the podcast was started in 2006 by Dario Floreano and several of his PhD students at EPFL, in Switzerland, including Sabine Hauert, Peter Dürr, and Markus Waibel, who are all still involved in Robohub today. Since then, the podcast team has become international, with most of its interviewers in the United States and Europe, and all of its members being volunteers.
To celebrate 300 episodes of our podcast, we thought we would catch up with some of our former, as well as current, volunteers from around the world to find out why and how they got involved in the podcast, how their involvement impacted on their lives and careers, and what they’re doing in their day jobs now.
In this episode, we take a closer look at the effect of novelty in human-robot interaction. Novelty is the quality of being new or unusual.
The typical view is that while something is new, or “a novelty”, it will initially make us behave differently than we would normally. But over time, as the novelty wears off, we will likely return to our regular behaviors. For example, a new robot may cause a person to behave differently initially, as its introduced into the person’s life, but after some time, the robot won't be as exciting, novel and motivating, and the person might return to their previous behavioral patterns, interacting less with the robot.
To find out more about the concept of novelty in human-robot interactions, our interviewer Audrow caught up with Catharina Vesterager Smedegaard, a PhD-student at Aarhus University in Denmark, whose field of study is Philosophy.
Catharina sees novelty differently to how we typically see it. She thinks of it as projecting what we don't know onto what we already know, which has implications for how human-robot interactions are designed and researched. She also speaks about her experience in philosophy more generally, and gives us advice on philosophical thinking.
In this episode Lilly Clark interviews Marlyse Reeves, PhD student at MIT, about her work in cognitive robotics and hybrid activity-motion planning. Reeves discusses the role of robotics in space, the challenges of multi-vehicle missions, planning under uncertainty, and her work on an underwater exploration mission.
In this episode, we hear from Brad Hayes, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, who directs the university's Collaborative AI and Robotics lab. The lab’s work focuses on developing systems that can learn from and work with humans—from physical robots or machines, to software systems or decision support tools—so that together, the human and system can achieve more than each could achieve on their own.
Our interviewer Audrow caught up with Dr. Hayes to discuss why collaboration may at times be preferable to full autonomy and automation, how human naration can be used to help robots learn from demonstration, and the challenges of developing collaborative systems, including the importance of shared models and safety to allow adoption of such technologies in future.
In this episode Lilly Clark interviews Nicholas Roy, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, about the Quest for Intelligence initiative and his research in robust robotics. Roy discusses how cognitive science pushes artificial intelligence, further pushing the capabilities of engineering tools and services, and speaks about the importance of explainable and ethical AI. He explains the challenges of capturing context and semantics in useful models of a system, and designing unmanned aerial vehicles and robots which interact with humans.
In this episode, Lauren Klein speaks with Dr. Rand Voorhies, co-founder and CTO of inVia Robotics. In a world where consumers expect fast home delivery of a variety of goods, inVia’s mission is to help warehouse workers package diverse sets of products quickly using a system of autonomous mobile robots. Voorhies describes how inVia’s robots operate to pick and deliver boxes or totes of products to and from people workers in a warehouse environment eliminating the need for people to walk throughout the warehouse, and how the actions of the robots are optimized.
In this episode, Ron Vanderkley interviews Mark Pivac, Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of FBR (formerly Fastbrick Robotics) about the world’s first end-to-end autonomous bricklaying robot, ‘Hadrian X’. Three years after his first interview, we catch up with Pivac to see how FBR has expanded its operation and chat about their latest commercial prototype, ‘Hadrian X’, as well as the future of the robotic construction industry.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Zhuoran Zhang, PhD student at the University of Toronto, about how robots can be used to assist in artificial insemination. Zhang discusses how precise robotic manipulators can be used to extract a single sperm and how sperm can be evaluated for fitness using computer vision. Zhang also discusses his future plans.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Brian Gerkey, CEO of Open Robotics about the Robot Operating System (ROS) and Gazebo. Both ROS and Gazebo are open source and are widely used in the robotics community. ROS is a set of software libraries and tools, and Gazebo is a 3D robotics simulator. Gerkey explains ROS and Gazebo and talks about how they are used in robotics, as well as some of the design decisions of the second version of ROS, ROS2.
In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Michal Luria, a PhD candidate in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, about research that explores the boundaries of Human-Robot Interaction. Michal draws inspiration from the Medieval Times for her project to test how historical automata can inform modern robotics. She also discusses her work with cathartic objects to support emotional release.
In this episode, join our interviewer Andrew Vaziri at Promat 2019, the largest expo for manufacturing and supply chain professionals in North and South America. Andrew interviews a handful of companies which provide warehouse fulfillment robots that can autonomous pick and place items. Our guests explain how advances in AI have made autonomous picking possible. They also talk about the unique technologies they use to stand out in a crowded field of competing products.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Bilge Mutlu, Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, about design-thinking in human-robot interaction. Professor Mutlu discusses design-thinking at a high-level, how design relates to science, and he speaks about the main areas of his work: the design space, the evaluation space, and how features are used within a context. He also gives advice on how to apply a design-oriented mindset.
In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Professor Milind Tambe of Computer Science and Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California about his research using artificial intelligence for wildlife conservation. Dr. Tambe describes his team's use of security games to combat poaching, and his experience deploying his algorithms to inform park ranger schedules internationally.
In this episode, Lilly Clark interviews Aleksandr Kapitonov, “robot economics” academic society professor at Airalab, on his work for Robonomics Platform, an Ethereum network infrastructure for integrating robots and cyber-physical systems directly into the economy. Kapitonov discusses the advantages of using blockchain, use cases including a fully autonomous vending machine, and the Robonomics technology stack.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Bernt Børnich, CEO, CTO, and Co-founder of Halodi Robotics, about Eve (EVEr3), a general purpose full-size humanoid robot, capable of a wide variety of tasks. Børnich discusses how Eve can be used in research, how Eve’s motors have been designed to be safe around humans (including why they use a low gear ratio), how they do direct force control and the benefits of this approach, and how they use machine learning to reduce cogging in their motors. Børnich also discusses the longterm goal of Halodi Robotics and how they plan to support researchers using Eve.
In this episode, Lauren Klein interviews Hae Won Park, a Research Scientist in the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab, about storytelling robots for children. Dr. Park elaborates on enabling robots to understand how children are learning, and how they can help children with literacy skills and encourage exploration.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Dylan Glas, Senior Robotics Software Architect at Futurewei Technologies and former chief architect for the ERICA android in the ERATO Ishiguro Symbiotic Human-Robot Interaction Project, about his work on ERICA, a realistic android robot. Glas discusses how ERICA was designed, the uncanny valley, the software architecture of ERICA, and some of the research studies that ERICA has been involved in.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Ian Bernstein, Founder and Head of Product at Misty Robotics, about a robotics platform designed for developers called Misty II. Bernstein discusses the motivation behind making a robotics platform for developers (relating it to personal computers), Misty II’s hardware extensibility and software “skills,” and the future direction of Misty Robotics.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Dor Skuler, CEO and co-founder of Intuition Robotics, about a socially assistive robot for older adults named ElliQ. Skuler discusses the motivation for ElliQ, how it infers context and changes its behavior accordingly, and how ElliQ adapts its behavior over time.
In this episode Abate interviews Yariv Bash from Flytrex. Yariv discusses how Flytrex works in cooperation with local businesses in a city to use drones to rapidly transport goods in a local region. A practical application is the delivery of food from local restaurants. Yariv discusses Flytrex’s plans for using their USD$7.5 million series B round of funding.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Amy Loutfi, a professor at Örebro University, about how semantic representations can be used to help robots reason about the world. Loutfi discusses semantics in general, as well as how semantics have been used for a simulated quad rotor to do path planning within constraints.
In this interview, Audrow Nash interviews Jaime Fernández Fisac, a PhD student at University of California, Berkeley, working with Professors Shankar Sastry, Claire Tomlin, and Anca Dragan. Fisac is interested in ensuring that autonomous systems such as self-driving cars, delivery drones, and home robots can operate and learn in the world—while satisfying safety constraints. Towards this goal, Fisac discusses different examples of his work with unmanned aerial vehicles and talks about safe robot learning in general; including, the curse of dimensionality and how it impacts control problems (including how some systems can be decomposed into simpler control problems), how simulation can be leveraged before trying learning on a physical robot, safe sets, and how a robot can modify its behavior based on how confident it is that its model is correct.
In this interview, Audrow Nash interviews Ryan Gariepy, Lars Grimstad, and Péter Fankhauser.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Pauline Pound, Philippe Morere, and Yujung Liu about the work they presented at the 2018 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Madrid, Spain.
In this interview, Audrow Nash interviews Kristoffer Richardsson, Michael Zillich, and Paulo Alvito.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Robert Lösch, Ali Marjovi, and Sophia Sakr about the work they presented at the 2018 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Madrid, Spain.
In this interview, Audrow Nash interviews Gabriel Lopes, Robot and Control Scientist at Robot Care Systems, and Bernt Børnich, CEO and Co-founder of Halodi Robotics.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Alexandros Kogkas, Katie Driggs-Campbell, and Martin Karlsson about the work they presented at the 2018 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Madrid, Spain.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Caitlyn Clabaugh, PhD Candidate at the University of Southern California, about lessons learned about putting robots in people's homes for human-robot interaction research. Clabaugh speaks about her work to date, the expectations in human-subjects research, and gives general advice for PhD students.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Patrick Tresset, a London based artist, on robots that draw people using a pen and paper in a way that is similar to the drawing process for humans. Tresset discusses his background in painting and programming, how his robot artists work, how he creates an experience for the person being drawn by the robots, about art history with robots, and about his future direction with robot artists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbdQbyff_Sk
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Robert Williamson, a Professor at the Australian National University, who speaks about a mathematical approach to ethics. This approach can get us started implementing robots that behave ethically. Williamson goes through his logical derivation of a mathematical formulation of ethics and then talks about the cost of fairness. In making his derivation, he relates bureaucracy to an algorithm. He wraps up by talking about how to work ethically.
In this interview, Audrow Nash interviews Amruta Moktali, VP of Product Management at Salesforce Analytics, about Salesforce Analytics’ analytic and artificial intelligence software. Moktali discusses the data-pipeline, how data is processed (e.g., noise), and how insights are identified. She also talks about how dimensions in the data can be controlled for (such as race, gender, or zip-code) to avoid bias and how other dimensions can be selected as actionable so Salesforce can make recommendations—and how they use interpretable methods so that these recommendations can be explained. Moktali also tells about her professional path, including going from computer engineering and computer science to product management and her experience with intrapreneurship (that is, starting an endeavor within a large organization).
In this episode, Audrow Nash interview Magnus Egerstedt, Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, about a way for anyone interested in swarm robotics to test their ideas on hardware, called the Robotarium. The Robotarium is a 725-square-foot lab at the the Georgia Institute of Technology that houses nearly 100 rolling and flying robots. To test their ideas, people can write their own programs, upload them to the Robotarium, and then watch the machines carry out their commands.
In this interview, Egerstedt speaks about the kinds of robots used in the Robotarium, design decisions in making the Robotarium, the differences between doing research in simulation and on hardware, and about lessons learnt and the challenges of building the Robotarium.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Chris McCool and Chris Lehnert about different projects that relate to agriculture at the Queensland University of Technology. McCool speaks about a large robot for weed management in fields. The robot uses Real-time kinematic GPS (very accurate) and a camera with deep learning to recognize various types of plants. Lehnert speaks about a robot to harvest sweet peppers. The robot first grabs on to the sweet pepper with a suction cup and then uses a small saw to cut the fruit from the bush. Chris speaks about using their method for other crops, how their robot does in terms of deployment, and the future of agriculture.
In this episode, Marwa ElDiwiny interview Peer Fisher, a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart and the Director of the Micro Nano and Molecular Systems Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. Fischer discusses micro robots that has been designed to move inside of environments similar to the human body called, "micro swimmers." He talks about how they are fabricated, powered, and how they can move with light or "nano propellers." Fischer also discusses simulating human tissue and the future of micro and nano robots, including how they could be a replacement for certain surgeries.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Shuo Yang about DJI's RoboMaster first-person shooter (FPS) competition, a competition designed to get people excited about robotics. For the competition, university teams build and program a robot to go against DJI's robots in a shooting battle. Each robot has a way of propelling marble-sized plastic balls and pressure sensors on their sides to register if they've been hit by an opponent's projectile. Shuo speaks about the goals of the competition, the teams that are involved, what strategies the teams use, the difficulties the team had in making their robot's good competitors, the future of the challenge, and how people can get involved.
In this episode, Marwa Mohammed Alaa Eldean Eldiwiny interviews Yong-Lae Park, Associate Professor at Seoul National University in South Korea, about the bio-inspired design and manufacture of soft robots and microrobots for healthcare. Park's research goal is to analyze the design and dynamics of biological systems and transform them into robotic/mechatronic systems for human life. Some of the his projects include development of artificial skin sensors, soft Muscle Actuators, and wearable robots for human rehabilitation.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Juxi Leitner, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at QUT; and Nicholas Panitz, Ben Wilson, and James Brett, from CSIRO.
Leitner speaks about the Amazon Picking challenge, a challenge to advance the state of robotic grasping, and their robot which won the challenge in 2017. Their robot is similar to a cartesian 3D printer in form and uses either a suction cup or a pinch gripper for grabbing objects. Their robot has a depth camera and uses a digital scale to determine if an object has been picked up successfully. Leitner discusses what their team did differently from other teams that helped them win the competition.
Panitz, Wilson, and Brett speak about their hexapod robots. Their hexapods are for several purposes, such as environmental monitoring and remote inspection. They choose to use hexapods because they are statically stable. They discuss the design of their hexapods and how research works at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Jonathan W. Hurst, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Oregon State University and CTO and co-founder of Agility Robotics, about legged locomotion, about a bipedal robot, called "Cassie." Hurst discusses Cassie's design, what types of research questions Cassie should allow, and applications of walking robots, including package delivery.
In this episode, Abate interviews Andrew Stein from Anki. At Anki they developed an engaging robot called Cozmo which packs sophisticated robotic software inside a lifelike, palm sized, robot. Cozmo recognizes people and objects around him and plays games with them. Cozmo is unique in that a large amount of development has been implemented to make his animations and behavior feel natural, in addition to focusing on classical robotic elements such as computer vision and object manipulation.
In this interview, Audrow Nash speaks with Sangin Park, Senior Research Engineer at Hyundai, about exoskeletons. Park describes three exoskeleton prototypes: one for helping workers reduce back pain, one for assisting a person with paraplegia, and an exoskeleton for soldiers. Park discusses the sensors and actuators of each exoskeleton, as well as Hyundai's exoskeleton ambitions.
In this episode Andrew Vaziri speaks with Nicolas Economou, CEO of the eDiscovery company H5 and co-founder and chair of the Science, Law and Society Initiative at The Future Society, a 501c3 think tank incubated at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Economou discusses how AI is applied in the legal system, as well as some of the key points from the recent “Global Governance of AI Roundtable”. The roundtable, hosted by the government of the UAE, brought together a diverse group of leaders from tech companies, governments, and academia to discuss the societal implications of AI.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Michael Laskey, PhD student at UC Berkeley, about a method for robust imitation learning, called DART. Laskey discusses how DART relates to previous imitation learning methods, how this approach has been used for folding bed sheets, and on the importance of robotics leveraging theory in other disciplines.
In this interview, Audrow speaks with Andrea Bajcsy and Dylan P. Losey about a method that allows robots to infer a human’s objective through physical interaction. They discuss their approach, the challenges of learning complex tasks, and their experience collaborating between different universities.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Maja Matarić, a professor at the University of Southern California and the Chief Science Officer of Embodied, about socially assistive robotics. Socially assistive robotics aims to endow robots with the ability to help people through individual non-contact assistance in convalescence, rehabilitation, training, and education. For example, a robot could help a child on the autism spectrum to connect to more neurotypical children and could help to motivate a stroke victim to follow their exercise routine for rehabilitation (see the videos below). In this interview, Matarić discusses the care gap in health care, how her work leverages research in psychology to make robots engaging, and opportunities in socially assistive robotics for entrepreneurship.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Monica Daley about learning from birds about legged locomotion. To do this, Daley analyzes the gaits of guineafowl in various experiments to understand the mechanical principles underlying gaits, such as energetic economy, mechanical limits, and how the birds avoid injury. She then tests her ideas about legged locomotion on legged robots with collaborators, including Jonathan Hurst from Oregon State University. Daley also speaks about her experience with interdisciplinary collaborations.
In this episode, Abate interviews Peter Harris from HighRes Biosolutions about automation in the field of drug discovery. At HighRes Biosolutions they are developing modular robotic systems that work alongside scientists to automate laboratory tasks. Because the requirements of each biomedical research laboratory are so varied, the robotic systems are specifically tailored to meet the requirements of each lab.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Karl Weaver (魏卡爾), formerly the Original Equipment Manufacturer Business Development Director for Oasis Smart SIM. Weaver discusses how wearable technology is growing as a form of payment system in China. He speaks about wireless technology, including Near-Field Communications (NFC) and Embedded SIM cards (eSIM), in wearable technology and in other applications, such as bike rental.
In this episode Abate talks with Zhe Zhang from Perceptin where they are building embedded platforms for robots to do Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms in real time. Zhe explains the methods they incorporate such as sensor fusion and hardware synchronization to make a highly accurate SLAM platform for IOT, consumer, and automotive grade robots.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Elliott Rouse, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, about an open-source prosthetic leg—that is a robotic knee and ankle. Rouse’s goal is to provide an inexpensive and capable platform for researchers to use so that they can work on prostheses without developing their own hardware, which is both time-consuming and expensive. Rouse discusses the design of the leg, the software interface, and the project's timeline.
In this interview, Audrow Nash interviews Helen Huang, Joint Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State, about a method of tuning powered lower limb prostheses. Huang explains how powered prostheses are adjusted for each patient and how she is using supervised and reinforcement learning to tune prosthesis. Huang also discusses why she is not using the energetic cost of transport as a metric and the challenge of people adapting to a device while it learns from them.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews several companies at the International Conference for Robotics and Automation (ICRA). ICRA is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s biggest conference and one of the leading international forums for robotics researchers to present their work.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Peter Adamczyk, Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on semi-active foot and ankle prostheses. The difference is that active below-knee prostheses work to move the person’s weight, emulating the calf muscle, while semi-active devices use small amounts of power to improve the performance of the prosthesis. Adamczyk discusses the motivation for semi-active devices and gives three examples: shiftable shapes, controllable keels, and alignable ankles.
In this interview, Audrow Nash interviews Marco Hutter, Assistant Professor for Robotic Systems at ETH Zürich, about a quadrupedal robot designed for autonomous operation in challenging environments, called ANYmal. Hutter discusses ANYmal's design, the ARGOS oil and gas rig inspection challenge, and the advantages and complexities of quadrupedal locomotion.
In this episode, Jack Rasiel interviews Vijay Kumar, Professor and Dean of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Kumar discusses the guiding ideas behind his research on micro unmanned aerial vehicles, gives his thoughts on the future of robotics in the lab and field, and speaks about setting realistic expectations for robotics technology.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Chris Gerdes, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, about designing high-performance autonomous vehicles. The idea is to make vehicles safer, as Gerdes says, he wants to “develop vehicles that could avoid any accident that can be avoided within the laws of physics.”
In this interview, Gerdes discusses developing a model for high-performance control of a vehicle; their autonomous race car, an Audi TTS named ‘Shelley,’ and how its autonomous performance compares to ameteur and professional race car drivers; and an autonomous, drifting Delorean named ‘MARTY.’
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Ayanna Howard, Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, about her work to help children with the movement disorder cerebral palsy. Howard discusses how robots and tablet can be used to “gamify” pediatric therapy. The idea is that if therapy is fun and engaging children are more likely to do it, and thus, they are more likely to see the long-term benefits of the therapy. Howard discusses how therapy is “gamified,” how a small humanoid robot is used to coach children, and how they work with pediatricians.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Katsu Yamane, Senior Research Scientist at Disney, about robotics in Disney. Yamane discusses Disney’s history with robots, how Disney currently uses Robots, how designing robots at Disney is different than in academia or industry, a realistic robot simulator used by Disney's animators, and on becoming a Disney Research “Imagineer.”
In this episode, MeiXing Dong talks with Leon Kuperman, CTO of CUJO, about cybersecurity threats and how to guard against them. They discuss how CUJO, a smart hardware firewall, helps protect the home against online threats.
In this episode, Jack Rasiel speaks with Kostas Bekris, who introduces us to tensegrity robotics: a striking robotic design which straddles the boundary between hard and soft robotics. A structure uses tensegrity if it is made of a number of isolated rigid elements which are held in compression by a network of elements that are in tension. Bekris, an Associate Professor of Computer Science, draws from a diverse set of problems to find innovative new ways to control tensegrity robots.
In this episode, MeiXing Dong interviews Matthias Vanoni, co-founder and CEO of Biowatch. Vanoni speaks about Biowatch, a wrist-veins biometric reader that functions as a security solution for mobile payments and smart devices. They discuss the technical challenges of building a miniaturized wrist-vein reader and how this device changes the usual user authentication process.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Peter Corke, Professor of Robotics at the Queensland University of Technology and Director of the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision, about Robot Academy. Robot Academy is an online platform that provides free-to-use undergraduate-level learning resources for robotics and robotic vision.
In this episode, MeiXing Dong conducts interviews at the 2017 Midwest Speech and Language Days workshop in Chicago. She talks with Michael White of Ohio State University about question interpretation in a dialogue system; Dmitriy Dligach of Loyola University Chicago about extracting patient timelines from doctor’s notes; and Denis Newman-Griffiths of Ohio State University about connecting words and phrases to relevant medical topics.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Sergey Levine, assistant professor at UC Berkeley, about deep learning on robotics. Levine explains what deep learning is and he discusses the challenges of using deep learning in robotics. Lastly, Levine speaks about his collaboration with Google and some of the surprising behavior that emerged from his deep learning approach (how the system grasps soft objects).
In addition to the main interview, Audrow interviewed Levine about his professional path. They spoke about what questions motivate him, why his PhD experience was different to what he had expected, the value of self-directed learning, work-life balance, and what he wishes he’d known in graduate school.
In this episode, Audrow Nash and Christina Brester conduct interviews at the 2016 International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation conference in Moscow, Russia. They speak with Vadim Kotenev of Rehabot and Motorica about prosthetic hands and rehabilatative devices; and Vagan Martirosyan, CEO of TryFit, a company that uses robotic sensors to help people find shoes that fit them well.
In this episode, Abate De Mey speaks with Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics, about warehouse automation with collaborative robots. At Locus Robotics, they increase the productivity of workers in e-commerce warehouses by using robot helpers to transport items that are passed to them by the workers. The lightweight autonomous robots move at a similar pace to their co-workers, use LIDAR and computer vision to detect people and avoid collisions. This allows people to share the warehouse floor with the robots. The collaborative robotic system is lightweight and can be adapted to existing warehouses with minimal alterations.
In this episode, Audrow Nash and Christina Brester conduct interviews at the 2016 International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation conference in Moscow, Russia. They speak with Roman Luchin, CEO of CyberTech Labs., about a robotics development platform called Trik. Trik is intended to be an intermediate step when learning about robotics between Lego Mindstorms and programming on an embedded platform. Trik allows users to program with a graphical interface by ordering blocks. These blocks contain code in several common programming languages (python, F#, Pascal, etc.) and the code can be modified directly.
This is the second of three interviews from the conference.
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In this episode, Jack Rasiel speaks with Kostas Daniilidis, Professor of Computer and Information at the University of Pennsylvania, about new developments in computer vision and robotics. Daniilidis’ research team is pioneering new approaches to understanding the 3D structure of the world from simple and ubiquitous 2D images. They are also investigating how these techniques can be used to improve robots’ ability to understand and manipulate objects in their environment. Daniilidis puts this in the context of current trends in robot learning and perception, and speculates how it will help bring more robots from the lab to the “real world”. How does bleeding edge research become a viable product? Daniilidis speaks to this from personal experience, as an advisor to startups spun out from the GRASP Lab and Penn’s Pennovation incubator.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Roland Siegwart and Matthias Hüni about Kickstart Accelerator, a Swiss Startup Accelerator. Siegwart leads the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETH Zürich and is one of the initiators of Kickstart Accelerator. Hüni is the vertical lead of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at Kickstart Accelerator and is involved in the program’s operations. Kickstart Accelerator seeks to provide international entrepreneurs with an inlet to the Swiss ecosystem, including connections to industry and academia.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Torsten Oelkes, Executive Chairman of CUBE, about the CUBE Tech Fair. The CUBE Tech Fair is a conference that takes place in Berlin in May that seeks to facilitate connections between companies. The Tech Fair also features a start up competition where the winner will be awarded €1,000,000 without exchange of equity or debt. In this interview, Toresten talks about CUBE’s business model, the robotic companies they’re affiliated with, the CUBE Tech Fair, and the €1,000,000 prize.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Bradley Knox, founder of bots_alive. Knox speaks about an add-on to a Hexbug, a six-legged robotic toy, that makes the bot behave more like a character. They discuss the novel way Knox uses machine learning to create a sense character. They also discuss the limitation of technology to emulate living creatures, and how the bots_alive robot was built within these limitations.
In this episode, Audrow Nash and Christina Brester conduct interviews at the 2016 International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation conference in Moscow, Russia. They speak with Albert Efimov, Chief Roboticist at Skolkovo, about creating an innovation cluster for robotics companies; Anastasia Uryasheva, CEO of Tsuru, about a waterproof unmanned aerial vehicle; and Borris Rozman, General Director of GNOM, about underwater vehicles.
This is the first of three interviews from the conference.
In this episode, Abate De Mey interviews speakers from the Artificial Intelligence and Drone tracks at RoboUniverse San Diego and the Inside 3D Printing Conference. Dr. Douglas Stow from the Drones track discusses the use of drones in analyzing large scale changes over time in terrains, and its applications in determining the extent of damage after a natural disaster. From the Artificial Intelligence track, Dr. Eugene Izhikevich discusses how his company, Brain Corporation, converts manually driven industrial machines into autonomous robots. Wrapping it up, Cullen Hilkene from 3Diligent discusses how his company optimizes the work flow and communication layer between a diverse set of 3D print vendors and their customers.
In this episode, Abate De Mey interviews two speakers from the Agricultural track of the RoboUniverse 2016 conference in San Diego: Dan Harburg of Soft Robotics Inc. and Matthew Borzage of BioTac. Borzage and Harburg discuss their distinct approaches to advancing gripping technology in Agriculture. Borzage stresses the importance of tactile sensing while Harburg pushes for low cost, soft grippers with no on-board sensors.
In this episode, Ron Vanderkley spoke to Dr Moritz Tenorth, head of software development at Magazino, a Munich-based startup developing mobile pick-and-place robots for item-specific logistics. They discussed his work on the Toru robot and what it means to the warehouse industry today and in the future.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Domenico Prattichizzo, Professor of Robotics at the University of Siena and Senior Scientist at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genova in Italy, about a device for assisting people who have lost the use of one of their hands, for example by a stroke. The device is an extra finger that functions to press an object into the paralyzed hand so that it can be grasped.
In this episode, Christina Brester interviews Vladimir Stanovov, PhD student and researcher at the Siberian State Aerospace University (Krasnoyarsk, Russia). Stanovov speaks about a speech-controlled wheelchair, which seeks to provide people that are quadriplegic, that is people with partial or total loss of use of their limbs and torso, with the possibility to control their wheelchairs through voice commands. In this interview Stanovov discusses the basic parts of the speech-controlled wheelchair, the fuzzy controller he created, and the trials they had in the medical center.
In this episode, Abate De Mey interviews Edward Neff, founder of SMAC Corporation. Mr. Neff discusses how breakthroughs in his company have allowed them to develop linear actuators compact enough to be used to actuate robotic fingers. Companies like Apple and Samsung push for the development of robotic fingers to perform lifelike tests on their phones.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Dieter Fox, Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, about the 100/100 Computer Vision Tracking Challenge. This is a self-imposed challenge to understand 100% of the pixels in an image 100% of the time in video footage; this includes understanding semantic information. Such understanding would allow robots to assist humans more naturally in environments like a home kitchen, wet lab, or in disaster response. To accomplish this challenge, Fox discusses challenges which include modeling, tracking, and detecting articulated objects.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Hasier Larrea, Founder and CEO of Ori Systems and MSc candidate at the MIT Media Lab, about robotics used to transform personal spaces. Larrea discusses how the world is urbanizing and how new space paradigms are needed to accommodate this shift. He proposes robotic furniture that allows for what is not being used to be hidden, such as a desk or a bed. Larrea discusses the robotic systems, how these systems will be integrated into existing infrastructure, and the future or Ori Systems.
In this episode, Abate De Mey interviews Jeff Sprenger, founder of the startup Xemory in Vermont, USA. At Xemory they are developing a robot simulation game called Xemo, where players learn to animate virtual robots.
Complex motion at each joint is broken down into its more fundamental components, called degrees of freedom. Players are faced with the challenge of controlling the several degrees of freedom to recreate lifelike motions such as crawling, walking, jumping, and even dancing. These challenges are similar to the ones faced by roboticists trying to develop lifelike, robust and balanced motions for legged robots.
Sprenger discusses the unique ways different age groups and genders interact with the software. Through incorporating feedback from the students, Sprenger adds new activities and challenges to keep students engaged and challenged, improving their understanding of robot control.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Edson Prestes, Professor at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and an organizer of the Humanitarian Robotics and Automation Technology Challenge (HRATC) 2016 competition. The HRATC competition challenges teams around the world to develop methods of controlling robots to detect land mines in large open environments.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews several researchers presenting their work at the Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) 2016 conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
In this episode, Ron Vanderkley interviews Jürgen "Juxi" Leitner, a researcher at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Robots Vision in the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. Leitner speaks about a system being developed for the Google Lunar XPrize, called LunaRoo.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Ekaterina Bereziy, Founder and CEO of ExoAtlet, about exoskeletons for the disabled and for rehabilitation.
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In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Hugh Herr, Director of the Biomechatronics Group at MIT. Herr talks about the accident that led to the amputation of both of his legs below the knee and how this shaped his rock climbing and academic career. Herr also discusses orthoses and exoskeletons developed by his research group, as well as the future of bionic technology.
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In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Fredrik Gustafsson, Professor in Sensor Informatics at Department of Electrical Engineering in Linköping University, about an initiative to reduce poaching in a rhino sanctuary in Ngulia, Kenya. Gustafsson discusses how he first became involved in this project, how he has worked with the rangers to develop solutions, and the future of this work.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Emo Todorov, Director of Movement Control Laboratory at the University of Washington, about a physics-based optimization method for controlling robots. Todorov describes how his physics-based method can be used to solve problems and discusses results in simulation and on hardware.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Karl Iagnemma, a Principal Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the CEO of nuTonomy, about autonomous vehicles in urban environments. Iagnemma discusses the market for autonomous cars, why nuTonomy is being developed and, at least initially, deployed in Singapore, and the technology of autonomous cars.
This is the second of two episodes where Audrow Nash interviews several companies at the International Conference for Robotics and Automation (ICRA). ICRA is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s biggest conference and one of the leading international forums for robotics researchers to present their work. The 2016 conference was May 16-21 in Stockholm, Sweden.
This is the first of two episodes where Audrow Nash interviews several companies at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). ICRA is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s biggest conference and one of the leading international forums for robotics researchers to present their work. The 2016 conference was May 16-21 in Stockholm, Sweden.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews several companies at last year’s INNOROBO, a conference that showcases innovation in robotics.
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In this episode, Ron Vanderkley interviews James Underwood from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics. Underwood discusses his work on an autonomous vegetable harvesting robot, Ladybird.
Transcript below.In this episode, Abate De Mey interviews Guido De Croon about Evolutionary Robotics and its use to design behaviors for flying robots.
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In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Silas Adekunle, Co-founder and CEO of Reach Robotics. They speak about Reach Robotics’ first product, Mecha Monsters: legged, gaming robots that are controlled by a smartphone.
Transcript below.In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Mark Pivoc from FastBrick about Hadrian the bricklaying robot. Fastbrick is an Australian robotics firm aiming to disrupt the local bricklaying market with a machine it says will be able to build a four-bedroom house in two days, without any human interaction.
In this episode, Andrew Vaziri speaks with John Lymer, Chief Architect of Robotics and Automation at SSL. They highlight key programs in space robotics from the 1980s through to SSL’s current program to robotically assemble satellites in space.
In this episode, Abate De Mey interviews Harry Gee, founder of the robotics startup Agilic. Harry discusses his company and the robots he designed using the Raspberry Pi and Pi zero. He then discusses the basics for creating a robotics start-up and provides advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
In this episode Andrew Vaziri speaks with Mike Osborne, Associate Professor in Machine Learning at the University of Oxford. They discuss how advancements in artificial intelligence may change the workforce, the economy and society based on findings from their study on the future of employment.
Transcript belowIn this episode, Andrew Vaziri speaks with Curtis Carson, Head of Research and Technology in Industrial Strategy and Systems at Airbus. They speak about the Airbus Shopfloor Challenge to be held at ICRA 2016, and discuss the need for a new generation of industrial robots for aircraft manufacturing.
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In this episode, we celebrate our 200th episode! That’s over 6000 minutes of robot goodness and nearly 8 years releasing interviews with your favorite roboticists. The podcast is all volunteer run, a special thanks to everyone on the team who’s made this possible! And thanks to all of you for listening in all these years.
To celebrate, our president Audrow Nash has invited a team of old-timers from the podcast team, and one of our favorite recurring guests, Rodney Brooks from Rethink Robotics.
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In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Simone Schürle, advisor and co-founder of MagnebotiX, about using small robots to harvest crystals. These crystals can be used to infer atomic structure. An example application is in drug development to see if protein binding has occurred.
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In this episode Audrow Nash interviews Konrad Fagertun, Chief Operating Officer of nLink in Norway.
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In this episode, Andrew Vaziri interviews Magnus Egerstedt, Professor at Georiga Tech, about his research in swarm robotics and multi-agent systems. They discuss privacy and security concerns, as well as research into interfaces designed to enable a single operator to control large swarms of robots.
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In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Stefan Williams of the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics, Marine Systems Group. They discuss the future of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), and a recent expedition where they used multi-session SLAM to map the famous Antikythera Shipwreck (circa 60-80 B.C.), one of the richest ancient wrecks ever discovered.
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In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews several companies from the International Conferences on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) showcase. The companies span the following applications: mobile robots for military and commercial uses, warehouse solutions, robotic arms and manipulators, and robotic systems to assist surgery.
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In this interview, Audrow Nash speaks with Davide Scaramuzza, Assistant Professor of Robotics at the University of Zurich and leader of the Robotics and Perception Group, about autonomous unmanned vehicles (UAV) that navigate using only on-board systems—no GPS or motion capture systems.
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In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Raymond Sheh, who is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computing at Curtin University and head of the Intelligent Robots Group.
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In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Brad Nelson, Professor at ETH Zurich, about his research regarding micro and nano robotics. They discuss many of Nelson’s projects: retinal and heart surgery, crystal harvesting, and robots with simulated flagella for mobility.
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In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews M. Bernardine Dias, Associate Research Professor at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, about TechBridgeWorld. TechBridgeWorld in an organization, founded by Dias, that develops technology to help serve developing communities. This interview focuses on a device that helps the blind learn to write.
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In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Sergei Lupashin about Perspective Robotics' tethered flying camera, the Fotokite Phi, which is currently crowdfunding on Indiegogo. The Phi is a portable light weight GoPro-carrying quadrocopter that flies without a vision system or GPS, and instead uses the tension on the retractable tether to determine where it is in space. According to Lupashin, the tethered leash provides a natural, easy-to-learn and accountable interface for controlling the Phi.
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In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Dr. Eleanor Sandry of Curtin University about her new book Robots and Communication. In the interview, we explore human to animal communication and what we can learn from it; human to humanoid robots interaction; and human to non-humanoid robots interactions. Also, we discuss Western and Eastern perceptions of robotics.
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In this interview, Audrow Nash talks to two teams from Mobile Microrobotics Challenge at the 2015 International Conference for Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
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In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Sangbae Kim, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), at the International Conference of Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2015. They speak about an electrically-powered quadruped called the Cheetah 2.
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In this episode, Per Sjöborg talks to Hans-Peter Grothaus, from CLAAS, about automation in agriculture.
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In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Dr. Lei Cui from Curtin University about his team’s work on 3D printable hand orthosis for rehabilitation, a task-oriented 4-DOF robotic device for upper-limb rehabilitation and a 3-DOF platform providing multi-directional perturbations for research into balance rehabilitation. They also discuss a high-speed untethered robotic fish for river monitoring and an amphibious robot for monitoring the Swan-Canning River System.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Helen Greiner, CEO and founder of CyPhy Works and co-founder of iRobot, about CyPhy Work’s LVL 1 photography drone. The LVL 1 drone has six propellers that are angled up and rotated slightly, which allows the drone to fly without tilting; flying without tilting is significant because, Helen says, it makes the drone more intuitive to control, as well as removing the need for a costly and high-maintenance camera stabilizing gimbal system.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to several robotics companies at the company showcase at RoboBusiness 2014, which took place in Boston, Massachusetts.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Federico Parietti, a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about his research on supernumerary robotic limbs that can be used in manufacturing and for rehabilitative purposes, among other uses.
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In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Todd Hylton, Senior Vice President at Brain Corporation, about neuromorphic computers. They discuss the robotics development board bStem, which approximates a neuromorphic computer, as well as the eyeRover: a small balancing robot that demonstrates how the bStem can be used in mobile robots.
In this podcast, Ron Vanderkley speaks to Donal Holland of Harvard University about his team’s work on the Soft Robotics Toolkit.
In this episode, Sabine Hauert interviews main stakeholders in European Robotics at the European Robotics Forum in Vienna.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Christina Brester, from the Siberian State Aerospace University, about her research on a method to identify emotional state from speech. This method performs speech analysis with a self-adaptive, multi-objective, genetic algorithm for feature selection and uses a neural network to classify those features. In this interview, we’ll discuss exactly what that means, as well as the implications and future of this research.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Kurosh Madani from the University of Paris-EST Créteil (UPEC) about neural networks. The talk begins with an overview of neural networks before discussing their possible applications.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Christoph Stiller from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Stiller speaks about the sensors required for various level of autonomous driving, as well as the ethics of autonomous cars, and his experience in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Professor Riccardo Cassinis from the University of Brescia in Italy about using robotics in education. Cassinis speaks about having children, from primary school through university, access and control robots remotely to learn subjects such as programming, geography, and foreign languages.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Hunter Lloyd, who is a Professor of Robotics at Montana State University and a comedian. Hunter performs a comedy act for all ages with partner Looney, a NAO Humanoid Robot from Aldebaran Robotics. Lloyd discusses making people laugh with his robot partner, why he does it, and how what he’s learned as a comedian relates to robotics.
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In today’s podcast, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Will Jackson from Engineered Arts Limited about his team’s work making robot actors.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Professor John Leonard from MIT about his research on dense, object-based 3D Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM).
NEW: Transcript below. In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Mythbusters‘ Grant Imahara, and Richard McKenna from The Creature Technology Company about robotics in the film, television and theatre industries.
NEW: Full transcript below. In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Edwin Olson, an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, about the University’s 32-acre testing environment for autonomous cars and the future of driverless vehicles.
Full transcript below. In this episode, Sabine Hauert speaks with Travis Deyle, about his IROS-nominated work on RFID tags, his blog Hizook, and the career path that brought him from academia, to founding his own start-up, and finally working for Google[x].
In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Professor Geoffrey Spink from Wollogong University about his team’s work on artificial muscles.
Earlier this year, the Robots Podcast team came across a story about two 17 year old twin sisters who started their own robotics outreach group. The story about the Tipperman sisters got us curious. What kind of robotics outreach activities are out there to inspire children? Do any of these activities make a difference in getting more girls interested in robotics?
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Peter Corke from Queensland University of Technology, about computer vision - the subject of his plenary talk at IROS 2014 (link to slides below). He begins with a brief history of biological vision before discussing some early and more modern implementations of computer vision. Corke also talks about resources for those interested in learning computer vision, including his book, Robotic Vision & Control, and a massively open online course (MOOC) that he plans to release in 2015.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Edgars Rozentals, the CEO and Founder of Helico Aerospace Industries. They talk about Helico’s upcoming product ‘AirDog’, which is an autonomous quadrocopter designed to record video for action sports.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews John Romanishin from MIT, about his modular robotics project ‘M-Blocks’. M-Blocks are small cubes (5 cm on a side) that have no external actuators, yet they manage to move and even jump.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Max Rheiner from Zurich University of the Arts (ZHDK) about his project Birdly. Birdly explores the experience of a bird in flight with several methods. Unlike a common flight simulator, the user embodies a bird, the Red Kite. To evoke this embodiment, Birdly mainly relies on the sensory-motor coupling. The participant can control the simulator with their hands and arms, which directly correlates to the wings and the primary feathers of the bird. Those inputs are reflected in the flight model of the bird and displayed physically by the simulator through nick, roll and heave movements.
In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews James Conrad, professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, about the history of the autonomous walking robot, Stiquito.
In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Russ Angold, co-founder and CTO of Ekso Bionics, about the wearable bionic suit, Ekso. This suit enables individuals with any amount of lower extremity weakness to stand up and walk over ground with a natural, full weight bearing, reciprocal gait. Walking is achieved by the user’s weight shifts to activate sensors in the device which initiate steps. Battery-powered motors drive the legs, replacing deficient neuromuscular function.
In this episode, we speak with Kyle Vogt, the CEO of Cruise. His company recently joined the “driverless revolution” with their release of RP-1. This system is a highway autopilot that can be installed in your existing car. It controls your steering, throttle, and braking, making sure your car remains safely in its lane and a safe distance from the car in front of you.
In this episode Ron Vanderkley speaks to Prof. Karol Miller, Director of the Intelligent Systems for Medicine Lab at the University of Western Australia, about medical robotics and how doctors and patients perceive its role and use. Central to his work are mathematical models of soft tissue (brain, liver, etc.) that can be used for robot-assisted surgery by providing fast and accurate feedback.
Human-robot interaction is a fascinating field of research in robotics. It also happens to be the field that is closely related to many of the ethical concerns raised with regards to interactive robots. Should human-robot interaction (HRI) practitioners keep in mind things such as human dignity, psychological harm, and privacy? What about how robot design relates to racism and sexism?
In this episode, Sabine speaks with Andrew Gryaznov, co-founder of Cubic Robotics and Roman Luchin, CEO of CyberTech Labs, about robotics in Russia. They provide us with an inside view on robotics education, innovations and startups in their country. The interview was done live at RoboForum in Moscow earlier this month.
In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Bill Reith, an engineer at Backyard Brains. The company develops RoboRoach, the world’s first commercially available “cyborg”, which was successfully backed on KickStarter.
In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Professor Peter Corke from Queensland University of Technology, about the fast-tracking research that will see robots planting, weeding, maintaining and harvesting crops. The AgBot is a light-weight, golf buggy-sized robot that has been specifically designed to reduce the environmental impact of weeding.
Link to audio file (27:49)In this episode Per Sjoborg speaks with Henrik Schunk about his company’s work in gripping technology, modular robotics and dexterous manipulation. They then look at service robotics, which was the focus of the SCHUNK Expert Days in Hausen, Germany.
Link to audio file (28:48)In this episode, we talk to Justin Werfel from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University about their latest paper published in Science on “Designing Collective Behavior in a Termite-Inspired Robot Construction Team”.
Link to audio file (41:00)The European Robotics Week 2013 featured 334 robotics related events in 24 countries and attracted more than 55’000 participants spanning all ages. To give us a snapshot of the event, we talk to three organizers of robotics activities including Fiorella Operto in Italy, Roko Tschakarow in Germany, and Douwe Dresscher in the Netherlands.
Link to audio file (33:53) What does it mean to have giants like Google, Apple and Amazon investing in robotics? Since last December, Google alone has acquired a handful of companies in robotics, home automation and artificial intelligence. This can be pretty exciting for robotics. But what exactly is the internet giant planning to do with this technology? Is there something we should be worried about? If there is, what can we do about it?
Link to audio file (26:55) Did you know that Robohub started right here, with the podcast? This is our 150th podcast episode, and to celebrate we brought together the original team to reenact our very first interview with Dario Floreano back in 2006. Floreano, who is director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL and of the Swiss NCCR Robotics tells us about the latest in Swiss robotics, his work in adaptive morphologies and flying robots, and his predictions for the future of robotics.
Link to audio file (33:13) In today’s episode Per Sjöborg speaks with Rezia Molfino from the PMAR group at University of Genova about how all robots are service robots, it's just that they serve people in different ways in different situations. We hear about some of the many interesting projects she is working on, ranging from challenging manufacturing problems in thin sheet machining (SwarmItFIX) and the textile industry (clopema), to assisted-living vehicles for use in an urban environment (Picav) and do-it-yourself, practical equipment for demining war zones (Locastra).
Link to audio file (25:51) In today’s episode Per Sjöborg speaks with Jan Westerhues, Investment Partner with Robert Bosch Venture Capital, about how they fund robotics companies. As a stepping stone towards their long-term goal of building autonomous cars, they are currently investing in a wide range of robotics technologies with real world applications. Westerhues talks about when in a project’s life they can help, and what to expect throughout their involvement. He also promises exciting news in the coming months, so stay tuned.
Link to audio file (41:58) In today’s episode Per Sjöborg speaks with Giulio Sandini, director of the Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences department at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), about how he eventually came to study robotics after starting out as a vision scientist in the field of bioengineering. They talk about why interdisciplinary work is important to robotics, and how diverse teams of engineers, biologists, psychologists, mathematicians, physicists, and medical doctors can learn from each other; Sandini follows up with several examples of interdisciplinary success at the IIT including the iCub and COMAN humanoid platforms, the HyQ quadruped, and their work in rehabilitation robotics.
Link to audio file (37:33) In today’s episode, Per Sjöborg speaks with Lynne Parker from the University of Tennessee about her work with robot teams. Her lab is developing techniques to get robots to team up to complete tasks that they individually could not. The robots share data from sensors to extend their perception or share capabilities to perform particular tasks. This approach is essential to increase the efficiency, potential and reliability of multi-robot systems.
Link to audio file (40:39)In this episode, Sabine Hauert interviews Paul Oh, the Director of the Drexel Autonomous Systems Lab at Drexel University. His team, spanning 10 universities, is competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) with the HUBO humanoid made by KAIST in South Korea.
Link to audio file (34:30) In this episode, AJung Moon talks to Julie Carpenter, a recent graduate of the University of Washington who interviewed 23 U.S. Military Explosive Ordnance Disposal personnel to find out how they interact with everyday field robots. Julie is currently writing a book on the topic that is scheduled to be published next year.
Link to audio file (27:16) In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with David Dorhout from Iowa State University about his Agricultural Robots that include Prospero the robot farmer and Aquarius the greenhouse watering robot.
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In this episode Sabine Hauert speaks with Jorge Heraud, CEO of California-based startup Blue River Technology which brings together computer vision and robotics to automate agriculture. Their first robot LettuceBot targets the state’s #1 vegetable crop. Its task is to thin rows of lettuce in fields. This involves selectively removing some of the plants by spraying excess fertilizer on them, thereby avoiding overcrowding while fertilizing nearby plants. The tractor-mounted robot is already being rented out to farms across the state.
Link to audio file (38:51) FutureDairy is an R&D development program to help Australian dairy farmers manage the challenges they are likely to face during the next 20 years. In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with the project lead Kendra Kerrisk from the University of Sydney about robotic milking and herding.
Link to audio file (22:28) In this episode, Sabine Hauert talks with Erin Kennedy at the Open Hardware Summit at MIT. Kennedy is famously know as RobotGrrl, the self-made roboticist and proud maker of the RobotBrrd, Buddy 4000 and BotBait. Starting at age 13, she taught herself programming, electronics, pcb design and mechanical engineering. She’s been sharing her passion for robotics through her blog and weekly G+ Hangout Robot Party that brings together robot enthusiasts to share their latest contraptions. She’s now bringing her work to the next level with robot kits commercialized through indiegogo last year and funded at 151%.
Link to audio file (24:09) In this episode Matthew Schroyer speaks with Nick Kohut, CEO of Dash Robotics, about their foldable hexapod robot and the ongoing crowdfunding campaign to get them into the hands of budding engineers, kids and hobbyists.
Link to audio file (25:03) In this episode, Sabine Hauert interviews Nils Napp from the Self-organizing Systems Research Group at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University.
Napp tells us about his project to create robots that can reliably build structures in uncertain, unstructured terrain. Like termites that can build complex structures using shapeless materials like mud, his robots build structures out of foam, toothpicks or bags of sand.
Link to audio file (31:13) Diana Saraceni is a Venture Capitalist at 360 Capital Partners. In this interview, she tells us about her first investment in robotics 3 years ago with Invendo Medical, and her views on how the market has changed since then. Hardware is now perceived as less risky, even though it is more challenging to scale than software. Recent success stories have further helped promote VC funding in robotics.
Saraceni discusses the importance of the founding team, as well as their advisors, for the success of a company. Finally, she shares her view on open source vs. proprietary technology from a venture capitalist’s perspective.
Link to audio file (41:02)In this episode, we speak with Matthew Schroyer, founder of DroneJournalism.org, co-founder of Drones for Good, and developer of the “Drones for Schools” program which teaches students to design, fabricate and program unmanned aerial systems to monitor the environment.
Link to audio file (44:12) In this episode, we speak with Jonathan Roberts, research director of the Autonomous Systems Lab at the CSIRO ICT Centre in Brisbane Australia. Roberts leads a team of more than 45 scientists and engineers in wide variety of robotics and automation projects that feature flying, ground and underwater robots.
Link to audio file (14:19) In today’s episode we speak with Martin Adams from the University of Chile about using robots in the mining industry. Mining is a dangerous job that would strongly benefit from robotic helpers. To drive this effort, the mining industry funded the Advanced Mining Technology Centre (AMTC). As the principal investigator there, Adams explores the use of robotic technologies such as mapping and SLAM that would be essential in mining automation. He also tells us why he chose to do robotics in South America.
Link to audio file (38:23) In this episode we meet with Tom Green, editor in chief of the Robotics Business Review, to discuss current trends in robotics. Robotics Business Review is a global robotics news and information resource headquartered in metro Boston (USA).
Green shares his view on how the focus within the robotics community differs in different parts of the world, and what impact public funding has on this. According to him, it is not technology but people that hold development up at the moment. We also hear about some success stories, that show how robotics make a difference in people’s lives.
Link to audio file (34:33)In the episode, we speak with Eric Stackpole and David Lang from the OpenROV project about their challenge in developing Eric’s idea to find an easy way to explore a cave that was rumored to contain a sunken treasure near his home.
Link to audio file (22:01)In this episode, we speak with Ramon Pericet and Michal Dobrzynski from EPFL about their Curved Artificial Compound Eye (CurvACE) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Inspired by the fly’s vision system, their sensor can enable a large range of applications that require motion detection using a small plug-and-play device. As shown in the video below, you could use these sensors to control small robots navigating an environment, even in the dark, or equip a small autonomous flying robot with limited payload. Other applications include home automation, surveillance, medical instruments, prosthetic devices, and smart clothing.
Link to audio file (29:07)In this episode, AJung talks to Peter Asaro from The New School in New York city about autonomous weapons systems. Peter tells us about the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, an international consortium of NGOs working together to ban autonomous weapons systems. You can read our full coverage of the campaign here, or have a look at our special focus series on robots and warfare.
Link to audio file (25:02)In this episode we hear from researchers at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab about the Science paper published today reporting on the first controlled flight of an insect-sized robot. The amazing high-speed video below shows the robot taking off, hovering in place and steering left and right. This work is part of the Robobees project that aims to make swarms of insect robots.
Link to audio file (33:23) In this episode, Per talks to Pericle Salvini from Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna about his work with social, ethical and legal issues in robotics. He tells us about the Robolaw project that will provide advice to the European Union when it creates laws concerning robotics. Finally, we discuss how you can contribute to this important work.
Link to audio file (31:43) In this episode we hear how the Spanish robotic startup Adele is creating a marketplace for robotics software. Through their platform, robot developers can buy software components for their robots, and software developers can sell their code, in a practical way. Examples of the software components, Adele calls them sparks, are speech recognition, synthetic speech, vision systems and user interface components. Their flagship project FIONA (Framework for Interactive-services Over Natural-conversational Agents) allows users to create intelligent and interactive virtual avatars.
Link to audio file (50:26) In this episode we hear from Professor Gurvinder Virk from the University of Gävl about how international standards are created in the ISO. He also tells us why he thinks they are essential for robotics and how you can participate and contribute.
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In this episode, we talk with Kate Darling from the MIT Media Lab, about giving rights to social robots. She tells us about a recent Pleo torture session she organized at the LIFT conference and the class she taught at Harvard Law School on “Robot Rights”.
Link to audio file (27:47) In this episode Per talks to Michael Mangan from the University of Edinburgh about using robotics to study and replicate insect behaviour.
Link to audio file (29:02) In today’s episode we cover the EU Robotics Week that took place during the last week of November and featured robotics related activities across Europe for the general public, highlighting growing importance of robotics in a wide variety of application areas.
Link to audio file (41:13)In this episode Per talks to robotics enthusiast and investment fund manager Renaud Champion. Champion is co-founder of the professional investment fund Robolution Capital, that focuses on investing in service robotics in the European market.
Link to audio file (36:25)In today’s episode we speak with Rob Saunders about work done at the University of Sydney in computational creativity and curiosity.
Link to audio file (26:42)In today’s episode we speak with Mel Torrie about work done at Autonomous Solutions, Inc. to make a large range of vehicles autonomous.
Link to audio file (25:10)In today’s episode, Per Sjoborg speaks with Ian Bernstein about the hugely successful Sphero robot and the company he co-founded, Orbotix.
Link to audio file (27:40)In today’s episode, we speak with Thomas Bräunl from the University of Western Australia about the MAGIC 2010 Challenge, the Wambot team and work done at the Robotics & Automation Lab.
Link to audio file (34:22)In today’s episode we speak with Chris Chesher about how he views the emergence of robotics. He brings a new and interesting perspective as his approach mixes science and technology studies, media studies and ethnography in an effort to understand robotic technologies and everyday-life.
Link to audio file (35:56)In today’s episode we speak with Dmitry Grishin about Grishin Robotics, his global investment company dedicated to helping robotics startups distribute already working products to the mass market.
Link to audio file (47:00) Link to transcript In today’s episode we speak with Stephen Gorevan from Honeybee Robotics about how he and Chris Chapman started the company and how his childhood dream of working for NASA got them into space robotics. The interview, which was recorded before the landing of Curiosity on Mars, gives us all the details about the equipment they built for the Mars Science Laboratory, including the Sample Manipulation System (SMS) and the Dust Removal Tool (DRT) which will enable the mission to explore and analyze the Martian environment. We also hear about their latest developments in small scale satellites called Cubesats.
Link to audio file (34:39) Link to transcript In today’s episode we speak with Rodney Brooks at the offices of Rethink Robotics about their first product Baxter, his ambition to revolutionize manufacturing and latest tips for young entrepreneurs.
Link to audio file (34:52)Link to transcriptIn today’s episode we speak with Mark Tilden, about the history before WowWee‘s RoboSapien and FemiSapien and about his belief that bottom up BEAM robotics (which stands for Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics) is essential in creating low cost, competent, robust and flexible robots.
Link to audio file (38:04)Link to transcriptIn today’s episode we speak with Matthias Kohler, faculty at ETHZ and renowned architect, about his work in robotic architecture at the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) which is part of the Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (SEC) in Singapore. We hear how he first got interested in robotics and automated architecture, and what the future plans are for his lab.
Link to audio file (35:00)Link to transcriptIn today’s episode we speak with Francesco Mondada, organizer of the Robotics Festival at EPFL that gathers over 15’000 visitors for hands-on workshops and demonstrations. We also walk you through the many exhibits showcasing multi-robot systems, flying robots, rehabilitation robots and robotic salamanders.
Link to audio file (29:22)Link to transcriptIn this episode, we talk to Salah Sukkarieh, Director of Research and Innovation at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR). He gives us an overview of the centre’s past and present projects, many addressing the special conditions robotics faces in Australia.
Link to audio file (28:07)In today’s show we bring you to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Open House, just in time to prepare for the landing of the Curiosity Mars Rover in less than 10 days.
Link to audio file (40:32)Today we talk with Andra Keay, founder of Robot Launch Pad, robotics startup accelerator based in Silicon Valley, about latest events, lean startup methodology, funding, and gender. Andra Keay
Link to audio file (31:50)In this episode, we talk to Mary-Anne Williams, knowledge engineer and roboticist from the University of Technology in Sydney Australia (UTS). Her work focuses on cognitive models of decision making and behaviour in complex and dynamic environments, including applications in mobile robotics.
Link to audio file (20:20)In this episode we talk to Dario Floreano, director of the Swiss National Center of Competence for Research (NCCR) in Robotics that gathers leading experts in the field working at Swiss institutions.
Link to audio file (53:13)In today’s episode we talk to Maarja Kruusmaa about robotic fish and the robotic mannequin they are developing at Fits.me, alongside with Diana Saarva, the COO of Fits.me.
Link to audio file (29:34)In this interview recorded at the Robotdalen Robotics Innovation Challenge, Professor Paolo Dario talks to Per about 3 conceptual waves of innovation, starting with industrial robots, then adding artificial intelligence and finally the third wave, which is coming, where convergence between different fields of science and interdisciplinary teams become increasingly important.
Link to audio file (26:18)In this episode we talk to New York Times best selling author Daniel Wilson about one of his latest books, Robopocalypse.
Link to audio file (26:07)Following up on Episode 99, this episode features Steven Cousins and Roland Siegwart, whom we had the pleasure to meet at the SCHUNK Expert Days, organized by SCHUNK GmbH this spring. Our interviews bring to surface the dynamic interplay of academia and industry – we talk about the transition from the research lab to the market. Listen in and find out which robotic applications are bound to make great breakthroughs soon!
Link to audio file (56:00)In today’s episode we speak with two authorities in robotics, George Bekey and Rodney Brooks about the last 50 years of robotics, the ongoing robot revolution and future prospects.
Link to audio file (31:06)Link to transcriptTo celebrate our 100th episode, we welcome Raffaello D’Andrea, Professor at ETHZ and co-founder of Kiva Systems.
Link to audio file (31:20)The 5th edition of the SCHUNK Expert Days, organized by SCHUNK GmbH from February 29 – March 1, once again brought together renown roboticists, and culminated in enriching discussions and insights. In the course of the last editions, this exclusive convention has gathered 79 speakers from 14 countries worldwide, and has caught our attention due to its cutting edge focus on service robotics.
Link to audio file (43:40)In today’s episode we focus on self-organizing systems in modular and swarm robotics with Radhika Nagpal, director of the Self-Organizing Systems Research Group at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.
Link to audio file (31:22)In today’s episode we look at some of the work done by the Senseable City Lab. We’ll be talking to Carlo Ratti, the director of the Lab, about two of the Lab’s many projects – namely Flyfire and Seaswarm.
Link to audio file (17:09)In this episode we talk to Subramanian Ramamoorthy from the University of Edinburgh about the recent progress in walking robotics. We then speak with Felipe Brandão Cavalcanti who is an Electrical Engineering student working on bipedal walking at the LARA lab at the University of Brasilia with Professor Geovany Borges.
Subramanian Ramamoorthy
Link to audio file (52:21)Today David Lane from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh talks about his journey from research to business and back. He talks about how he got started in offshore work and robotics research and how that led him to develop new smarts for existing hardware. David shares his personal view on how the Thunderbirds, diving and the space race contributed to his focus on underwater technology. He also discusses his research on autonomous underwater vehicles, involving software architecture for decision making as well as complex sensors for understanding the world around you and underwater communication.
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In this episode, the Robots Podcast team looks at the robots and technologies that shaped 2011. We’ll be discussing industrial robots, cloud robotics, soft robots, service robots, aerial robots, autonomous cars, agriculture robots, bio-inspired robots, human-like walkers and swarm robotics.
Link to audio file (59:06)In today’s episode we look at robots made by Adept Technology Inc. with Product Marketing Manager, Erin Rapacki. She tells us about what it takes to make robots a product.
Link to audio file (13:04)In today’s episode we discuss the national funding strategies of the USA, as a part of our special series on Robotics Roadmaps worldwide. Our first episode on the subject looked at funding in Japan with Tomomasa Sato. Today we’ll be focussing on the Robotics Roadmap in the USA with one of its main creators, Henrik Christensen.
Link to audio file (44:00)In today’s show we hear from our new collaborator, Per Sjoborg who is the founder of Flexibility Envelope, a blog on self-reconfiguring modular robotics. He speaks to Martin Nilsson from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science about his experience in making snake robots and connectors for modular robots.
Link to audio file (28:29)In today’s show, we take you all the way to Brazil. Marcelo Becker from the University of São Paulo (USP) talks to us about how mobile robots are going to help change agriculture, manufacturing and driving in his country. We then speak with Marcel de Sena Dall’Agnol a student at USP about the excellent robotics competition they organized at SEMATRON, which is a mechatronics conference organized by USP undergraduates.
Link to audio file (28:47)In today’s show, we hear about two demonstrations that caught our attention at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). Péter Fankhauser from the ETHZ in Zurich tells us about the Rezero ballbot, a balancing robot that speeds around on a sphere. Mike Rubenstein from the Self-organizing Systems Research Group at Harvard then tells us about their efforts to make swarms of 1024 robots a reality with the kilobot project.
Link to audio file (01:02:42)In today’s show we take you around the Exhibit Hall of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) that took place in San Francisco last week. IROS is one of the main conferences in robotics, attracting thousands of roboticists from around the world. This year’s edition celebrating 50 years of robotics received a record number of submissions. The conference, that spans over 6 days, featured workshops, tutorials, interactive presentations, live robot demonstrations and keynote talks from world-leading roboticists on design, bio-robotics, and Google’s autonomous cars.
Link to audio file (35:16)In today’s show, we look at the playful field of educational robotics. We start by talking to Dr. Francesco Mondada, the leader of the MOBOTS group at EPFL, about his group’s efforts in this field. Focus is given to the Robotics Festival, an annual event he started back in 2008. We then talk with Stéphane Magnenat, a former member of the group and current member of the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETHZ. Stéphane developed ASEBA, a straight-forward software package that allows beginners to program robots easily and efficiently. Finally, Fanny Riedo, PhD student in the MOBOTS group, presents the low-cost educational Thymio II robot.
Link to audio file (54:28)This episode is the last of this three part special series about robot art with guest interviewer David St-Onge, an engineer working at the interface of visionary arts and creative science. David was our guest in a previous episode of the Robots Podcast about robot art. He now brings us into his world through in-depth conversations with 6 world renowned experts in the field. In today’s show, we talk to Leonel Moura, a European artist born in Lisbon, Portugal, and Ken Rinaldo, Director of the Art and Technology program in the Department of Art at The Ohio State University. Both artists are well known for their dual talent as artist and robot engineer, having built most of their systems themselves.
Link to audio file (54:53)This episode is the second of a three part special series about robot art with guest interviewer David St-Onge, an engineer working at the interface of visionary arts and creative science. David was our guest in previous episode with the Robots Podcast about robot art. He now brings us into his world through in-depth conversations with 6 world renowned experts in the field. In today’s show, we talk to Bill Vorn from the University Concordia in Montreal and Louis-Philippe Demers from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapour. Both artists started their carreer together in Montreal where they worked on state of the art robotic projects for more than 10 years. One of their most famous projects, ‘La cour des Miracles’ can be seen below.
Link to audio file (01:01:58)This episode is the first of a three part special series about robot art with guest interviewer David St-Onge, an engineer working at the interface of visionary arts and creative science. You might remember David from a previous interview with the Robots Podcast. He now brings us into his world of robot art through in-depth conversations with 6 world renowned experts in the field. In today’s show, we talk to Nicolas Reeves from the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada and Stelarc from Brunel University in the UK and the University of Western Sydney. Both have worked together in the past on the floating head experiment.
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The ROBOTS team has grown steadily over the years, filling its ranks with robot enthusiasts from Switzerland, USA, Greece, UK, Brazil and Japan. We take care of everything, from digging out the latest news, to interviewing main actors in robotics, animating the episodes, maintaining the website, and mixing the podcasts. We’re students, roboticists, hobbyists, musicians and journalists.
Link to audio file (46:31)In this episode we speak with Frédéric Guerne, director of Digger DTR, and with Paul Bosscher, chief robotics engineer at Harris Corp., about robots which assist us in demining land-mine fields and defusing IEDs.
Link to audio file (41:58)In this episode we speak with Newton Howard, director of the Mind Machine Project and research scientist at MIT.
Link to audio file (23:21)In this episode we speak with Henrik Schunk, Managing Partner of SCHUNK GmbH & Co. KG and Chairman of EUnited Robotics.
Link to audio file (24:12)In today’s episode we talk about a new generation of affordable robots with the Bilibot project and its leader Garratt Gallagher from MIT.
Link to audio file (24:44)In today’s episode we meet with Natalie Freed, David Robert and Adam Setapen from Cynthia Breazeal’s Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab. They’ll be telling us about the Playtime Computing System, a playground where kids can interact with the physical world and its virtual extension.
Link to audio file (25:05)The European Robotics Forum, jointly organized by the European Robotics Technology Platform (EUROP) and the European Robotics Research Network (EURON), was hosted this year on April 6-8, in Västerås, Sweden by Robotdalen. Thanks to an invitation by EUnited Robotics, we got a chance to be there and talk to some of Europe’s major players in the field, from both industry and research. Today’s episode is the second of a two part series on the event, in which we talk to Bernd Liepert CTO of KUKA AG and president of EUROP and Rich Walker from Shadow Robot.
Link to audio file (26:48)The European Robotics Forum, jointly organized by the European Robotics Technology Platform (EUROP) and the European Robotics Research Network (EURON), was hosted this year on April 6-8, in Västerås, Sweden by Robotdalen. Thanks to an invitation by EUnited Robotics, we got a chance to be there and talk to some of Europe’s major players in the field, from both industry and research. Today’s episode is the first of a two part feature on the event, in which we talk to Jessica Karlsson from Robotdalen, Ola Svanström from ABB Robotics and Professor Moshe Shoham, founder of Mazor Robotics.
Link to audio file (29:25)Our episode today features David St-Onge, an engineer working at the interface of visionary arts and creative science. Having participated in numerous robotic-art projects (including the Cloudharp, SAILS/Mascarillons) he talks about the opportunities and challenges of undertaking projects combining the contrasting domains of arts and science/engineering.
Link to audio file (29:18)In today’s episode we look at a novel way to interact with your robot: through mind control. Raul Rojas returns to our show to talk about how his AutoNOMOS team used brain waves to give commands to their autonomous vehicle, MadeInGermany. We then talk to Geoffrey Mackeller, CTO of Emotiv Systems, the producer of the EEG headset used as an interface for this project.
Link to audio file (38:28)In today’s show we’ll be talking about futuristic manipulators that look nothing like the typical industrial robot arms you’ve seen in factories. Our first guest, Heinrich Jaeger from the University of Chicago tells us about the soft universal gripper that was published in PNAS. Our second guest, Andrzej Grzesiak, presents the bio-inspired manipulator he created with Festo and that won the German Future prize last year.
Link to audio file (37:08)In today’s show we’ll have a look at the next killer application in robotics, telepresence. The idea is simple, instead of planning a bothersome phone or video conference meeting with all your colleagues, you communicate through a telepresence robot that can move around your workplace while you stay at home. Our first guest, Jean-Christophe Baillie, is the CEO of Gostai which just commercialized the Jazz robots this year. Our second guest, Trevor Blackwell, presents his company’s Anybots.
Link to audio file (22:19)In today’s episode we discuss the national funding strategies of Japan, as a part of a series on funding strategies worldwide. In particular, we’ll be talking to an expert and leading figure in Japanese Robotics, Tomomasa Sato, who will give us insights into the Japanese robotics roadmap – for the past, present and future!
Link to audio file (29:47)In this episode we revisit robot olfaction and take a closer look at the problem of odor source localization. Our first guest, Hiroshi Ishida from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology is an expert in the field, whose sniffing robots range from blimps to ground and underwater robots. Our second guest, Thomas Lochmatter from EPFL talks about tradeoffs between biologically inspired and probabilistic approaches to navigate a gas plume.
Link to audio file (26:01)In today’s episode we look at a new market in robotics with huge potential, agriculture. With us, Joe Jones, co-founder of Harvest Automation and father of the Roomba. In addition, you might have noted that we’re starting the new year with an upgrade to our website. Our partner, robots.net, will now provide us with news. You can access each episode’s news items, along with many others, via the website’s new NEWS tab, which replaces the former Forum. We think that this will increase both the quality and accessibility of our news content, and look forward to your comments in the improved comments section under each post.
Link to audio file (52:46)Happy New Year from the whole Robots Podcast team! Don’t miss our amazing holiday robot videos! For this last episode of 2010 we look at multi-robot teams and impressive quadrotor capabilities with Vijay Kumar from the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania and one of his PhD students, Daniel Mellinger.
Link to audio file (42:37)In this episode we dive into the world of famous science fiction writer Greg Bear. Christine then takes us on an audio journey through one of his books, Mariposa. Finally don’t forget to send us your YouTube holiday videos featuring robots.
Link to audio file (44:07)In today’s episode we take a look at the status and progress of the personal robotics domain — a research field which is about to change our lives! We talk to Steve Cousins, CEO of Willow Garage and a major player in the field. We then talk to Moritz Tenorth to get a fascinating insight into the technological details which the work in this domain entails.
Link to audio file (41:28)In today’s episode we take a close look at swarm robotics and its potential use in real-world applications with expert Alan Winfield, co-founder of the Bristol Robotics Lab in the UK.
Link to audio file (51:04) In today’s episode we take a deeper look at what’s behind the hype over autonomous vehicles, and talk to two experts in the field, Alberto Broggi, leader of the Vislab Intercontinental Vehicle Challenge, and Raul Rojas, leader of the Made in Germany autonomous vehicle project.
Link to audio file (51:48)In today’s episode we speak about flying robots with Chris Anderson, founder of DIY Drones which is now the largest amateur UAV community in the world, and one of the largest robotics communities.
Link to audio file (24:37)In today’s episode we speak with David X. Cohen, the head writer and executive producer of Futurama!
Link to audio file (49:12)In this episode we look at how robots can use smell to navigate and map their environment or detect hazards. Our first guest, Achim Lilienthal from Örebro University in Sweden focuses on mapping gas clouds and localizing their source. Our second guest, Lino Forte Marques from the University of Coimbra in Portugal tells us about applications and sensors.
Link to audio file (59:59) This episode focuses on the legal and ethical implications of robotics. Ryan Calo from the Stanford Law School discusses the big impact of liability legislation on the progress of robotics and the impact robots have on your privacy.
Link to audio file (40:57)In this episode we dive into the world of programmable matter with Michael Tolley and Jonas Neubert from the Computational Synthesis Laboratory run by Hod Lipson at Cornell University, NY. They present their amazing hardware and control to stochastically assemble matter in fluid.
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In this episode, we discover an aerial modular robot called the Distributed Flight Array. To talk about this, we have Raymond Oung from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. Then, to celebrate aerial robotics, we’re holding a contest on flying robot noises for a chance to win a WowWee Bladestar.Raymond Oung
Link to audio file (49:15)In today’s episode we’ll be diving into the world of Science Fiction with an interview of Patrick Gyger, director of one of the major Science Fiction Museums in the world called Maison d’Ailleurs. To celebrate the genre, we then bring you the Selkies stories written by Jack Graham without any interruptions.
Link to audio file (32:50)In today’s episode we’ll be looking at nanorobotics from the hardware side to the control. In particular, we’ll be talking to one of the most renowned world leaders in the field, Ari Requicha from the University of Southern California. Our second guest, Grégory Mermoud, is a senior PhD student at the Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Lab at the EPFL, and a rising expert in the field of distributed nanosystems.
Link to audio file (36:58)In this episode we look at the Research and Development (R&D) done at iRobot in the government field with lead roboticist Brian Yamauchi.
Link to audio file (28:44)In today’s episode we speak about modeling biology using robots and how lessons learned through this process can feedback into robotics. Our first guest, Barbara Webb, is a world renowned expert in the field with several seminal papers on the subject such as “Using robots to understand animal behavior.” This interview follows up on her previous interview with Talking Robots. Our second guest, Steffen Wischmann, from the EPFL and University of Lausanne gives us his in-depth overview of the cross-fertilization between biology and robotics and tells us about his interest in artificial evolution.
Link to audio file (29:25)Today’s episode was recorded at the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab in the middle of some beautifully expressive robots such as the Huggable, Tofu and Leonardo. There, we had a chance to speak with Sonia Chernova about the Mars Escape online game that is being used to learn about how humans and robots can work in teams. We then speak with Kenton Williams about the technical aspects behind one of their most expressive robots, Nexi.
Link to audio file (25:07)Today’s episode was recorded at ICRA in Anchorage Alaska, one of the major conferences in robotics with a 1575 head count and 857 papers. At the robot exhibit, we met with the Vice President in Engineering of French-based company Aldebaran, Luc Degaudenzi and with his colleague Cédric Vaudel who is the Sales Manager for North America. Aldebaran makes the Nao humanoid robot which has been seen at Robocup, showing off his soccer skills. We also talk with Nao in our first ever interview of a robot! Nao will be presenting himself and his version of Star Wars.
Link to audio file (49:54)Welcome to the second part of our 50th episode special! To celebrate 50 episodes of Robots, we’re doing a review of some of the greatest advances in robotics during the last 50 years, and predictions on what we can hope to see in the next half century. In last week’s episode we covered embodied AI, robot toys, androids, underwater robots, education robots and brain-machine interfaces. In today’s episode we speak with Jean-Christophe Zufferey on flying robots, Dan Kara on the robotics market, Kristinn Thórisson on AI, Andrea Thomaz on human robot interactions, Terry Fong on space robotics and Richard Jones on nano robots.
Link to audio file (41:35)Today we celebrate the 50th episode of ROBOTS! For the occasion we speak with 12 scientists about the most remarkable developments in robotics over the last 50 years and their prediction for the next half-century. This 50th special is split into two episodes with the second half airing in two weeks. Today we’ll be talking to Rolf Pfeifer on robotics in general, Mark Tilden robot toys, Hiroshi Ishiguro on androids, Oscar Schofield on underwater robots, Steve Potter on brain machine interfaces and Chris Rogers on eduction robots. Our next episode will give you a snapshot view on nano robots, AI, flying robots, human robot interactions, robot business, and space robots.