Robohub.org
ep.

016

podcast
 

2008 New Year’s special with Dan Kara, Terry Fong, Dario Floreano, Steve Rainwater and Minoru Asada

         

by
02 January 2009



share this:

For our New Year’s episode, we’ll be giving you an overview of the trends in robotics for 2008 and an insight into next year’s developments with five experts in robotics from different backgrounds and continents. We speak with Dan Kara from Robotics Trends about the robot marketplace, Terry Fong from the NASA Ames Research Center, Dario Floreano from the EPFL, Steve Rainwater from robots.net and Minoru Asada from Osaka University.

Dan Kara

Dan Kara is the president and co-founder of Robotics Trends, a US based company specialized in the burgeoning personal, service and mobile robotics market. His company has been working over the years to compile a business image of robotics and inform through their webportal.

Terry Fong

Terry Fong is the Director of the Intelligent Robotics Group at the NASA Ames Research Center. 2008 was a busy year in space robotics with several missions sending back loads of scientific data from Mars.

Dario Floreano

Dario Floreano is the director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the EPFL in Lausanne Switzerland where he focuses on taking inspiration from biology to design swarming, evolving and flying robots as well as researching how biological societies can evolve to communicate and cooperate.

Steven Rainwater

Steven Rainwater is one of the founding editors of robots.net, and was previously featured in a Robots episode on the robot blogosphere. His specialty is hobbyist robotics, and he tells us about the latest products that you can find in your local hobby shop.

Minoru Asada

Minoru Asada is the director of the Asada Lab at Osaka University and the director of the Asada Synergistic Intelligence Project. He is also greatly involved in the Robotcup Federation.

Christmas Contest Winner

In our last episode, we asked you to guess what our WowWee Femisapien did on her first weekend in Switzerland for a chance to win one. Well, you most likely won’t be surprised to learn that she took advantage of the excellent snow in December to go down a few slopes with her newly learned ski moves and her personal coaches here at ROBOTS (video coming soon).

Congratulations to Erin at robotgrrl.com for her excellent animation and correct guess!

Links:


Latest News:

Instead of our traditional news item we made a short year-end review of the biggest news items of 2008 in our forum. Let us know what was your biggest news of 2008!

View and post comments on this episode in the forum



tags:


Podcast team The ROBOTS Podcast brings you the latest news and views in robotics through its bi-weekly interviews with leaders in the field.
Podcast team The ROBOTS Podcast brings you the latest news and views in robotics through its bi-weekly interviews with leaders in the field.

            AUAI is supported by:



Subscribe to Robohub newsletter on substack



Related posts :

Global robotics technology roadmap

  03 Jun 2026
A multi-regional, cross-domain strategic perspective for Europe, Asia, and the United States.

RoboChem Flex: democratisation of the autonomous synthesis robot

  02 Jun 2026
A versatile, modular design and the option for "human-in-the-loop" analytics.

Robot Talk Episode 158 – Autonomous robot deliveries, with Ahti Heinla

  29 May 2026
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Ahti Heinla from Starship Technologies about their AI-powered delivery robots that operate independently on streets and pavements.

Light-activated gel could impact wearables, soft robotics, and more

  28 May 2026
In the field of ionotronics, data are transferred through ions, potentially providing a bridge between electronics and biological tissue.

Handle with care: Soft robot gripper picks ripe fruit without bruising

  27 May 2026
Stretchable fiber-optic sensors used to create a soft robot gripper.

Robot Talk Episode 157 – Generating new robot designs, with Josie Hughes

  22 May 2026
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Josie Hughes from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne about using AI to develop new designs for robotic manipulators.

Robotics Café brings together autonomous robot practitioners

  20 May 2026
Recently launched series for researchers, students and industry practitioners aims to provide a platform for students to present their work.

Table tennis robot defeats some of world’s best players – why this has major implications for robotics

  18 May 2026
Ace, from Sony AI, is the first robot to beat elite human players in competitive physical sport.



AUAI is supported by:







Subscribe to Robohub newsletter on substack




 















©2026.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence