Sense Think Act Podcast – Robohub

Dan Mantz: Growing Interest in STEM, Soft Skills, and Labor Shortages | Sense Think Act Podcast #21

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 17:22:13 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Dan Mantz, who is the CEO of the Robotics Education and Competition (REC) Foundation. The REC Foundation is a nonprofit that works with VEX Robotics to build interest in STEM related career opportunities. Dan speaks about the different competitions REC facilitates, why REC is a nonprofit, how REC works with VEX Robotics, on the importance of soft skills, on workforce gaps, and on the future of education.

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Maria Telleria: Construction Robots and Working with Unions | Sense Think Act Podcast #20

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 17:22:10 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Maria Telleria, who is a co-founder and the CTO of Canvas. Canvas makes a drywall finishing robot and is based in the Bay Area. In this interview, Maria talks about Canvas’s drywall finishing robot, how Canvas works with unions, Canvas’s business model, and about her career path.

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Dan O’Mara: Turning Robotics Education on its Head | Sense Think Act Podcast #19

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 24 May 2022 18:45:27 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Dan O’Mara, who is the founder and COO of Circuit Launch and Mechlabs. Circuit Launch is a space for hardware entrepreneurs to work in Oakland, California, and Mechlabs is a project-based course to learn robotics. This interview is mostly about Mechlabs, but talks about the origins of Circuit Launch, including how it is not a maker or coworking space and its business model. For Mechlabs, we talk about several of its aspects that make it different than a university education in robotics, including how there are mentors not instructors, how projects are scoped, and how people are invited to work on what is most interesting to them. We also talk about the future of Mechlabs and how it fits with current universities.

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Afreez Gan: Open Source Robot Dog, Kickstarter, and Home Robots | Sense Think Act Podcast #18

Sense Think Act Podcast — Sun, 08 May 2022 16:13:02 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Afreez Gan, who is the founder and CEO of MangDang; MangDang is a Chinese startup that makes Minipupper, an open source robot dog that uses the Robot Operating System (ROS). Minipupper was inspired by and built with lessons learned from the Stanford Pupper, an open source robot dog. In this interview, Afreez speaks about Minipupper’s hardware, software, and documentation, about manufacturing Minipupper, and about his eventual goal of building a home robot dog.

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Dayo McIntosh: A Robot Mixologist to Spark Wellness Talks | Sense Think Act Podcast #17

Sense Think Act Podcast — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 16:30:51 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Dayo McIntosh, who is the founder of Yateou; Yateou is an early-stage startup that makes wellness products and has a customer facing robot, ADE, that personalizes customer orders. Dayo speaks about what motivated her to start Yateou, how she uses the robot arm, ADE, and about her plans for Yateou’s future.

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Helen Greiner: Solar Powered Robotic Weeding | Sense Think Act Podcast #16

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 08:00:20 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Helen Greiner, CEO at Tertill, which makes a small solar powered weeding robot for vegetable gardens. The conversation begins with an overview of Helen’s previous robotics experience, including at as a student at MIT, Co-founder at iRobot, Founder and CEO at CyPhyWorks, and in advising government research in robotics, AI, and machine learning. From there, Helen explains the design of the Tertill robot, how it works, and her high hopes for this simple robot: to help reduce the environmental impact of the agriculture industry by helping people to grow their own food. In the last part of the conversation, Helen speaks broadly about her experience in robotics startups, the robotics industry, and the future of robotics.

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Christian Fritz: Full-stack Robotics and Growing an App Marketplace | Sense Think Act Podcast #15

Sense Think Act Podcast — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 19:33:23 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Christian Fritz, CEO and founder of Transitive Robotics. Transitive Robotics makes software for building full stack robotics applications. In this conversation, they talk about how Transitive Robotic’s software works, their business model, sandboxing for security, creating a marketplace for robotics applications, and web tools, in general.

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Tim Chung: DARPA Subterranean Challenge | Sense Think Act Podcast #14

Sense Think Act Podcast — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 16:01:52 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Tim Chung, Program Manager in the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), on the DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge. The SubT Challenge is a robotics challenge that aims to develop innovative technologies that would augment operations underground. In this conversation, they talk about the motivation of the SubT Challenge, its systems (hardware) and virtual (simulation) challenges, how the resulting technology has been shared with the world, on benchmarking the robotics behaviors in simulation, on the challenge of scoping the SubT Challenge, and on building the final environment for the systems challenge.

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Steve Macenski: Open Source Robot Navigation | Sense Think Act Podcast #13

Sense Think Act Podcast — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 17:45:35 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Steve Macenski, who is the Open Source Robotics Engineering Lead at Samsung Research America. Steve leads the Nav2 project, which is an open source robot navigation framework. In this conversation, they talk about the problem and challenges of robot navigation, how Nav2 works at a high level, hybrid planners, and about Steve’s experience working with the Nav2 community.

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Matt Robinson: Accelerating Industrial Workflows with Open Source | Sense Think Act Podcast #12

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 22:33:10 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Matt Robinson, Program Manager for ROS-Industrial Americas at the Southwest Research Institute. ROS Industrial is a group that seeks to help industrial users, for example factories, leverage ROS and its ecosystem. In this conversation, they talk about Matt’s background, the need for the ROS-Industrial group and what problems they’re working to solve, ROS-Industrial’s consortium, and ROS-Industrial’s new working group.

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CBQ: Commercial-grade Autonomous Mowers, Safety, and Dogfooding | Sense Think Act Podcast #11

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 21:57:21 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Charles Brian Quinn (aka, CBQ), CEO and a Co-Founder of Greenzie. Greenzie make an autonomous driving system for commercial lawn mowers. We talk about Greenzie’s autonomous mowing system, how Greenzie has worked with manufacturers to up-fit their system into commercial mowers, how Greenzie does dog-fooding, safety and standards, and about CBQ’s experiences bootstrapping and with venture capital.

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Brett Aldrich: State Machines for Complex Robot Behavior | Sense Think Act Podcast #10

Sense Think Act Podcast — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 01:02:38 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Brett Aldrich, author of SMACC and CEO of Robosoft AI. Robosoft AI develops and maintains SMACC and SMACC2, which are event-driven, behavior state machine libraries for ROS 1 and ROS 2, respectively. Brett explains SMACC, its origins, other strategies for robot control such as behavior trees, speaks about the challenges of developing software for industry users and hobbyists, and gives some advice for new roboticists.

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Youssef Benmokhtar: Digitization of Touch and Meta AI Partnership | Sense Think Act Podcast #9

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 20:19:16 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Youssef Benmokhtar, CEO of GelSight, a Boston-based company that makes high resolution tactile sensors for several industries. They talk about how GelSight’s tactile sensors work, GelSight’s new collaboration with Meta AI (formerly, Facebook AI) to manufacture a low cost touch sensor called DIGIT, on the digitization of touch, touch sensing in robotics, how GelSight is investing in community and open source software, and Youssef’s professional path in several industries.

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Jason Richards: Robotic Food Delivery, Crowdfunding, and Working with Lawmakers | Sense Think Act Podcast #7

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 18:23:58 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Jason Richards, CEO at DaxBot. DaxBot makes a charismatic robot for food delivery. Jason speaks on their delivery robot, their crowdfunding campaign, DaxBot’s revenue model, working with lawmakers to have robots on the sidewalks, and Jason teases their realtime operating system, DaxOS.

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Tobias Holmes: Agriculture Robots, Herbicide Resistance, and Education | Sense Think Act Podcast #6

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 16:56:23 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Tobias Holmes, Quality Assurance Manager at Blue River Technologies. Blue River uses computer vision and robotics in agriculture and was acquired by John Deere in 2017. Tobias speaks about herbicide resistance, spraying weeds, quality assurance and testing on hardware, and on encouraging kids to learn robotics.

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Sense Think Act Pocast: Erik Schluntz

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 08:07:04 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Erik Schluntz, co-founder and CTO of Cobalt Robotics, which makes a security guard robot. Erik speaks about how their robot handles elevators, how they have humans-in-the-loop to help their robot make decisions, robot body language, and gives advice for entrepreneurs.

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Sense Think Act Podcast: Melonee Wise

Sense Think Act Podcast — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 09:55:02 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks with Melonee Wise, former CEO of Fetch Robotics and current VP of Robotics Automation at Zebra Technologies. Melonee speaks about the origin of Fetch Robotics, her experience at Willow Garage, her experience being acquired by Zebra Technologies, challenges in the warehouse setting, on autonomous cars, and on the future of robotics.

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Sense Think Act Podcast: Adrian Macneil

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 15:57:10 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Adrian Macneil, Co-founder and CEO of Foxglove. Foxglove makes Foxglove Studio, an open source visualization and debugging tool for robotics. Adrian speaks about the origin of Foxglove, Foxglove’s business model, web and robotics, and gives advice to those interested in getting more involved in robotics.

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Sense Think Act Podcast: Dave Coleman

Sense Think Act Podcast — Sat, 02 Oct 2021 09:00:22 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Dave Coleman, Chief Executive Officer at PickNik Robotics. Dave speaks at a high level about what MoveIt is and what problems it helps roboticists solve, they talk about supervised autonomy, including a collaboration with NASA and MoveIt Studio, and Dave talks about MoveIt 3.0.

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Sense Think Act Podcast: Ryan Gariepy

Sense Think Act Podcast — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 22:42:56 +0000

In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Ryan Gariepy, Chief Technology Officer of both Clearpath Robotics and OTTO Motors. Ryan speaks about the origin of Clearpath, how Clearpath focuses on making reliable robots, and the future of robotics.

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