In this episode, Abate flew to Denver, Colorado, to get a behind-the-scenes look at the future of recycling with Joe Castagneri, the head of AI at Amp Robotics. With Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs) processing a staggering 25 tons of trash per hour, robotic sorting is the clear long-term solution.

Recycling is a for-profit industry. When the margins don’t make sense, the items will not be recycled. This is why Amp’s mission to use robotics and AI to bring down the cost of recycling and increase the number of items that can be sorted for recycling is so impactful.

Joe Castagneri
Joe Castagneri graduated with his Master of Science in Applied Mathematics, with an undergrad degree in Physics. While still in university, he first joined the team at Amp Robotics in 2016 where he worked on Machine Learning models to identify recyclables in video streams of Trash in Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs). Today, he is the Head of AI at Amp Robotics where he is changing the economics of recycling through automation.

Nico, Emil, and Moritz founded ReRun with the mission of making powerful visualization tools free and easily accessible for roboticists. Nico and Emil talk about how these powerful tools help debug the complex problem scopes faced by roboticists. Tune in for more.

Nikolaus West
Co-Founder and CEO
Niko is a second-time founder and software engineer with a computer vision background from Stanford. He’s fanatic about bringing great computer vision and robotics products to the physical world.

Emil Ernerfeldt
Co-Founder and CTO
Emil fell in love with coding over 20 years ago and hasn’t looked back since. He’s the creator of egui, an easy-to-use immediate mode GUI in Rust, that we’re using to build Rerun. He brings a strong perspective from the gaming industry, with a focus on great and blazing fast tools.

Links

• ReRun
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Many people associate prosthetic limbs with nude-colored imitations of human limbs. Something built to blend into a society where people have all of their limbs while serving functional use cases. On the other end of the spectrum are the highly optimized prosthetics used by Athletes, built for speed, low weight, and appearing nothing like a human limb.

As a child under 12 years old, neither of these categories of prosthetics particularly speaks to you. Open Bionics, founded by Joel Gibbard and Samantha Payne, was started to create a third category of prosthetics. One that targets the fun, imaginative side of children, while still providing the daily functional requirements.

Through partnerships with Disney and Lucasfilms, Open Bionics has built an array of imagination-capturing prosthetic limbs that are straight-up cool.

Joel Gibbard dives into why they founded Open Bionics, and why you should invest in their company as they are getting ready to let the general public invest in them for the first time.

Joel Gibbard

Joel Gibbard lives in Bristol, UK and graduated with a first-class honors degree in Robotics from the University of Plymouth, UK.

He co-founded Open Bionics alongside Samantha Payne with the goal of bringing advanced, accessible bionic arms to the market. Open Bionics offers the Hero Arm, which is available in the UK, USA, France, Australia, and New Zealand. Open Bionics is revolutionizing the prosthetics industry through its line of inspiration-capturing products.

Links

• Open Bionics
• Pre-register to invest
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Dr. Tyler Reid, co-founder and CTO of Xona Space Systems, discusses a new type of global navigation satellite system (GNSS). Xona Space Systems plans to provide centimeter-level positioning accuracy and will serve the emerging autonomous vehicle community, where precise navigation is key. Reid discusses the advantages and technical challenges of a low Earth orbit (LEO) solution.

Tyler Reid

Tyler Reid is co-founder and CTO of Xona Space Systems. Previously, Tyler worked as a Research Engineer at the Ford Motor Company in localization and mapping for self-driving cars. He has also worked as an engineer at Google and as a lecturer at Stanford University, where he co-taught the GPS course. Tyler received his PhD (2017) and MSc (2012) in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford and B.Eng. (’10) in Mechanical Engineering from McGill.

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The Recycling Industry in the United States is a for-profit industry. They profit from taking recyclable material, refining it, and reselling it to companies at a cheaper price than producing the material from scratch.

Supply and Demand in Recycling

If you look at the demand side of the recycling industry, an array of multi-billion dollar companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are incentivized to buy recycled goods and reduce their materials costs.

On the supply side, ~300 million tons of trash are generated annually in the United States. Estimates suggest that up to 75% of that is recyclable.

On paper, it seems clear that maximizing the amount of trash the US recycles is in everyone’s interest. One issue though, less than a third of the trash ends up recycled.

Areeb, co-founder of Glacier, breaks down the multi-layered reasoning behind why the Recycling industry cannot handle this volume of trash, and what Glacier is doing to address this.

Areeb Malik

Areeb Malik is the Co-Founder of Glacier, and he is on a personal mission to fight climate change and extract value from the $123B worth of recyclables that fill the landfills and oceans. Before founding Glacier, Areeb was a Software Engineer at Facebook, where he used Machine Learning and Computer Vision to build out new product features.

Links

• Glacier
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At ICRA 2022, Benjamin Rosman delivered a keynote presentation on an organization he co-founded called “Deep learning Indaba”.

Deep Learning Indaba is based in South Africa and their mission is to strengthen Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning communities across Africa. They host yearly meetups in varying countries on the continent, as well as promote grass roots communities in each of the countries to run their own local events.

What is Indaba?

An indaba is a Zulu word for a gathering or meeting. Such meetings are held throughout southern Africa, and serve several functions: to listen and share news of members of the community, to discuss common interests and issues facing the community, and to give advice and coach others.

Benjamin Rosman

Benjamin Rosman is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, where he runs the Robotics, Autonomous Intelligence, and Learning (RAIL) Laboratory and is the Director of the National E-Science Postgraduate Teaching and Training Platform (NEPTTP).

He is a founder and organizer of the Deep Learning Indaba machine learning summer school, with a focus on strengthening African machine learning. He was a 2017 recipient of a Google Faculty Research Award in machine learning, and a 2021 recipient of a Google Africa Research Award. In 2020, he was made a Senior Member of the IEEE.

Links

• Deep Learning Indaba
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Prof Brendan Englot, from Stevens Institute of Technology, discusses the challenges in perception and decision-making for underwater robots – especially in the field. He discusses ongoing research using the BlueROV platform and autonomous driving simulators.

Brendan Englot

Brendan Englot received his S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007, 2009, and 2012, respectively. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. At Stevens, he also serves as interim director of the Stevens Institute for Artificial Intelligence. He is interested in perception, planning, optimization, and control that enable mobile robots to achieve robust autonomy in complex physical environments, and his recent work has considered sensing tasks motivated by underwater surveillance and inspection applications, and path planning with multiple objectives, unreliable sensors, and imprecise maps.

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A lot of times on our podcast we dive into startups and smaller companies in robotics. Today’s talk is unique in that Brady Watkins gives us insight into how a big company like Softbank Robotics looks into the Robotics market.

we think scale first, (the) difference from a startup is our goal isn’t to think what’s the first 10 to 20, but we need to think what’s the first 20,000 look like. – Brady Watkins

Brady Watkins

Brady Watkins is the President and General Manager at Softbank Robotics America. During his career at Softbank, he helped to scale and commercialize Whiz, the collaborative robot vacuum designed to work alongside cleaning teams. Watkins played a key role in scaling the production to 20,000 units deployed globally.

Prior to his time at SBRA, Watkins was the Director of Sales, Planning, and Integration at Ubisoft, where he held several positions over the course of 10 years.

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Marine environments present a unique set of challenges that render several technologies that were developed for land applications completely useless. Communicating using sound, or at least as people use sound to communicate, is one of them.

Michael Fulton tackles this challenge with his presentation at ICRA 2022 by using body language to communicate with an AUV underwater. Tune in for more.

His poster can be viewed here.

Michael Fulton

Michael Fulton is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. His research focuses primarily on underwater robotics with a focus on applications where robots work with humans. Specifically, human-robot interaction and robot perception using computer vision and deep learning, with the intent of creating systems that can work collaboratively with humans in challenging environments.

Brandon Gilles, Founder and CEO of Luxonis, tells us his story about how Luxonis designed one of the most versatile perception platforms on the market.

Brandon took the lessons learned from his time at Ubiquiti, which transformed networking with network-on-a-chip architectures, and applied the mastery of embedded hardware and software to the OAK-D camera and the broader OAK line of products.

To refer to the OAK-D as a stereovision camera tells only part of the story. Aside from depth sensing, the OAK-D leverages the Intel Myriad X to perform perception computations directly on the camera in a highly power-efficient architecture.

Customers can also instantly leverage a wide array of open-source computer vision and AI packages that are pre-calibrated to the optics system.

Additionally, by leveraging a system-on-a-module design, the Luxonis team easily churns out a multitude of variations of the hardware platform to fit the wide variety of customer use cases. Tune in for more.

Brandon Gilles

Brandon Gilles is the Founder and CEO of Luxonis, maker of the OAK-D line of cameras. Brandon comes from a background in Electrical and RF Engineering. He spent his early career as a UniFi Lead at Ubiquiti, where his team helped bring Ubiquiti’s highly performant and power-efficient Unifi products to market.

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Dr. Sihao Sun discusses his award-winning research in the area of controlling the flight of a drone when faced with a sudden rotor failure.

Typical research in this area addressed the case where one of the four rotors in a quadrotor suddenly, spontaneously stops working. This previous research does not take into full account real-life scenarios where rotor failure is common. This includes collisions with other drones, walls, birds, and operating in degraded GPS environments.

Dr. Sihao Sun

Dr. Sihao Sun is a postdoctoral research assistant at the Robotics and Perception Group (RPG) in University of Zurich directed by Prof. Davide Scaramuzza. Currently, he is working on control and perception for aerial robots (drones).

In December 2020, he received his PhD degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Control and Simulation Group of Delft University of Technology. His works on quadrotor fault-tolerant flight control have been featured by reputable media, such as IEEE Spectrum.

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Underwater Autonomous Vehicles face challenging environments where GPS Navigation is rarely possible. John McConnell discusses his research, presented at ICRA 2022, into fusing overhead imagery with traditional SLAM algorithms. This research results in a more robust localization and mapping, with reduced drift commonly seen in SLAM algorithms.

Satellite imagery can be obtained for free or low cost through Google or Mapbox, creating an easily deployable framework for companies in industry to implement.

Links

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Yu Sun, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Florida, created and organized the Robotic Grasping and Manipulation Competition. Yu talks about the impact robots will have in domestic environments, the disparity between industry and academia showcased by competitions, and the commercialization of research.

Yu Sun

Yu Sun is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Florida (Assistant Professor 2009-2015, Associate Professor 2015-2020, Associate Chair of Graduate Affairs 2018-2020). He was a Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University from 2016 to 2017, and received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Utah in 2007. Then he had his Postdoctoral training at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), Cambridge, MA (2007-2008) and the University of Utah (2008-2009).

He initiated the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Robotic Hands, Grasping, and Manipulation and served as its first co-Chair. Yu Sun also served on several editorial boards as an Associate Editor and Senior Editor, including IEEE Transactions on Robotics, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), ICRA, and IROS.

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Bill Smart, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics at Oregon State University, helped start competitions as part of ICRA. In this episode, Bill dives into the high-level decisions involved with creating a meaningful competition. The conversation explores how competitions are there to showcase research, potential ideas for future competitions, the exciting phase of robotics we are currently in, and the intersection of robotics, ethics, and law.

Bill Smart

Dr. Smart does research in the areas of robotics and machine learning. In robotics, Smart is particularly interested in improving the interactions between people and robots; enabling robots to be self-sufficient for weeks and months at a time; and determining how they can be used as personal assistants for people with severe motor disabilities. In machine learning, Smart is interested in developing strategies for teaching robots to act effectively (or even optimally), based on long-term interactions with the world and given intermittent and at times incorrect feedback on their performance.

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At ICRA 2022, Competitions are a core part of the conference. We shine a spotlight on influential competitions in Robotics. In this episode, Dr Liam Paull talks about the Duckietown Competition, where robots drive around Rubber Ducky passengers in an autonomous driving track.

Dr. Liam Paull

Liam Paull is an assistant professor at l’Université de Montréal and the head of the Montreal Robotics and Embodied AI Lab (REAL). His lab focuses on robotics problems including building representations of the world (such as for simultaneous localization and mapping), modeling of uncertainty, and building better workflows to teach robotic agents new tasks (such as through simulation or demonstration). Previous to this, Liam was a research scientist at CSAIL MIT where he led the TRI funded autonomous car project. He was also a postdoc in the marine robotics lab at MIT where he worked on SLAM for underwater robots. He obtained his PhD from the University of New Brunswick in 2013 where he worked on robust and adaptive planning for underwater vehicles. He is a co-founder and director of the Duckietown Foundation, which is dedicated to making engaging robotics learning experiences accessible to everyone. The Duckietown class was originally taught at MIT but now the platform is used at numerous institutions worldwide.

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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. She also dives into “StRETcH” a Soft to Resistive Elastic Tactile Hand, a variable stiffness soft tactile end-effector, presented by her research group.

Carolyn Matl

Carolyn Matl is a research scientist at the Toyota Research Institute, where she works on robotic perception and manipulation with the Mobile Manipulation Team. She received her B.S.E in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 2016, and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley in 2021. At Berkeley, she was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and was advised by Ruzena Bajcsy. Her dissertation work focused on developing and leveraging non-traditional sensors for robotic manipulation of complicated objects and substances like liquids and doughs.

Carolyn Matl’s Related Research Videos

Links

• StRETcH: a Soft to Resistive Elastic Tactile Hand
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ApexAI is driving advances in ROS2 to make it viable for use in autonomous vehicles. The changes they are implementing are bridging the gap between the automotive world and robotics.

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. This technology was showcased at the Indy Autonomous Challenge where million-dollar autonomous cars raced each other on a track.

Apex.OS is a certified software framework and SDK for autonomous systems that enable software developers to write safe and certified autonomous driving applications compatible with ROS 2.

Joe Speed

Joe Speed is VP of Product & Chief Evangelist at Apex.AI. Prior to joining Apex.AI, Joe was a member of Open Robotics ROS 2 TSC, Autoware Foundation TSC, Eclipse OpenADx SC, and ADLINK Technology’s Field CTO driving robotics and autonomy.

Joe has spent his career developing and advocating open-source at organizations including Linux Foundation and IBM where he launched IBM IoT and co-founded the IBM AutoLAB automotive incubator. Joe helped make MQTT, IoT protocol, open-source and convinced the automakers to adopt it.

Joe is working to do the same for Apex.AI’s safe ROS 2 distribution and ROS middleware. Joe has developed a dozen advanced technology vehicles but is most proud of helping develop an accessible autonomous bus for older adults and people with disabilities.

Links

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Machine Learning at the edge is gaining steam. BrainChip is accelerating this with their Akida architecture, which is mimicking the human brain by incorporating the 5 human senses on a machine learning-enabled chip.

Their chips will let roboticists and IoT developers run ML on device for low latency, low power, and low-cost machine learning-enabled products. This opens up a new product category where everyday devices can affordably become smart devices.

Rob Telson

Rob is an AI thought-leader and Vice President of Worldwide Sales at BrainChip, a global tech company that has developed artificial intelligence that learns like a brain, whilst prioritizing efficiency, ultra-low power consumption, and continuous learning. Rob has over 20 years of sales expertise in licensing intellectual property and selling EDA technology and attended Harvard Business School.

Links

• BrainChip Inc
• Akida Neural Processor SOC
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Over the past decade, camera technology has made gradual, and significant improvements thanks to the mobile phone industry. This has accelerated multiple industries, including Robotics. Today, Davide Scaramuzza discusses a step-change in camera innovation that has the potential to dramatically accelerate vision-based robotics applications.

Davide Scaramuzza deep dives on Event Cameras, which operate fundamentally different from traditional cameras. Instead of sampling every pixel on an imaging sensor at a fixed frequency, the “pixels” on an event camera all operate independently, and each responds to changes in illumination. This technology unlocks a multitude of benefits, including extremely highspeed imaging, removal of the concept of “framerate”, removal of data corruption due to having the sun in the sensor, reduced data throughput, and low power consumption. Tune in for more.

Davide Scaramuzza

Davide Scaramuzza is a Professor of Robotics and Perception at both departments of Informatics (University of Zurich) and Neuroinformatics (joint between the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich), where he directs the Robotics and Perception Group. His research lies at the intersection of robotics, computer vision, and machine learning, using standard cameras and event cameras, and aims to enable autonomous, agile, navigation of micro drones in search-and-rescue applications.

Links

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Suma Reddy, CEO of Future Acres, talks about her company which is focused on creating smart farming tools to reduce labor demand and increase efficiency. Suma introduces her journey into agriculture technology and the issues in current farming practices that can benefit from robotic solutions. Future Acres’s robotic harvest companion, Carry, autonomously transports crops within the farms and collects valuable data. Suma also discusses the impact of their technology and their visions for the future of agricultural technology.

 Suma Reddy is Co-founder and CEO of Future Acres, an AgTech startup building advanced mobility and AI solutions for farms to increase production efficiency, farmworker safety and provide real-time data and analytics. She is a three-times AgTech + ClimateTech founder (vertical farming, organic waste-to-energy, renewable energy), is on the advisory board of Scale for ClimateTech, a Board Member of GrainPro, and teaches Entrepreneurship for Sustainability and Resilience at the NYC School of Visual Arts. Suma is passionate about sustainable solutions and the disruptive technology that will help advance a better environment and more resilient world forward.

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Oleg Shipitko, Chief Technical Director of Evocargo, an integrated logistics service company using autonomous vehicles speaks with Kate. Oleg talks about the need for automating operational logistics inside enclosed facilities centers and how their autonomous vehicles and other operational services can greatly improve the current way we transport goods within facilities such as ports, warehouses and factories. Oleg also discusses the sensing choices for the specific use cases of these autonomous vehicles.

Oleg Shipitko

Oleg Shipitko is the Chief Technical Director of Evocargo. He has a bachelors and masters degree in autonomous information and control systems (bachelors: 4.96/5.0, masters: 5.0/5.0), and a PhD in Space Science and Technology with focus in Mathematical modeling, numerical methods and program complexes.

Oleg has received numerous awards including: Best paper awarded at 32nd European Conference on Modeling and Simulation (ECMS-2018): Ground Vehicle Localization With Particle Filter Based On Simulated Road Marking Image and Best paper awarded at IV International Conference on Information Technology and Nanotechnology (ITNT-2018): Gaussian filtering for FPGA based image processing with High-Level Synthesis tools.

Links

• Evocargo
• Evocargo Youtube
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Jakob Foerster an accredited Machine Learning Research Scientist who has been at the forefront of research on Multi-Agent Learning speaks with interviewer Kegan Strawn.

Dr. Foerster explains why incorporating uncertainty into multi-agent interactions is essential to creating robust algorithms that can operate not only in games but in real-world applications.

Jakob Foerster
Jakob Foerster is an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford. His papers have gained prestigious awards at top machine learning conferences (ICML, AAAI) and have helped push deep multi-agent reinforcement learning to the forefront of AI research.

Jakob previously worked at Facebook AI Research and received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford under the supervision of Shimon Whiteson. During his Ph.D., Jakob also interned at Google Brain, OpenAI, and DeepMind.

Jakob’s research interests span Deep Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning, Human-AI Coordination, Emergent Communication, Search, Planning, and Game Theory.

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Torrey Smith, Co-Founder of Endiatx, is changing the reputation endoscopies have for being uncomfortable. At Endiatx, they are developing a pill-sized robot that you swallow, which will then livestream your digestive system for a doctor to view. Our interviewer Abate dives in.

Torrey Smith
Torrey Smith is the Co-Founder & CEO of Endiatx, a medical robotics company that manufactures tiny robotic pills capable of active movement inside the human stomach with control over internet protocol. Prior to launching Endiatx, he developed medical devices in the areas of endometrial ablation, atherectomy, therapeutic hypothermia, sleep apnea, and vascular closure.

An aerospace engineer by training, he takes a keen interest in the deep tech sector and is a proud mentor of up-and-coming founders at the Founder Institute. He is also the principal founder of the international arts collective known as Sextant, and he has had his art featured in the Smithsonian.

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Lilly interviews Stephanie Schneider, a PhD candidate at Stanford working on unconventional space robotics. Schneider explains her work on Reachbot, a long-reach crawling and anchoring robot, which repurposes extendable booms for mobile manipulation. They discuss the challenges and exciting elements of robotic prototyping for low-gravity or otherwise unique environments.

Stephanie Schneider

Stephanie Schneider is a Ph.D. candidate in Aeronautics and Astronautics in the Autonomous Systems Laboratory at Stanford, working with Professor Marco Pavone. She received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 2014. Stephanie’s research interests include real-time spacecraft motion-planning, grasping and manipulation in space, and adaptive control for autonomous robotics.

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Amit Goel, Director of Product Management for Autonomous Machines at NVIDIA, discusses the new collaboration between Open Robotics and NVIDIA. The collaboration will improve the way ROS and NVIDIA’s line of products such as Isaac SIM and the Jetson line of embedded boards operate together.

NVIDIA’s Isaac SIM lets developers build robust and scalable simulations. Dramatically reducing the costs of capturing real-world data and speeding up development time.

Their Jetson line of embedded boards is core to many robotics architectures, leveraging hardware-optimized chips for machine learning, computer vision, video processing, and more.

The improvements to ROS will allow robotics companies to better utilize the available computational power, while still developing on the robotics-centric platform familiar to many.

For the developers out there, check out the ISAAC ROS Github repository to implement this yourself.

Amit Goel

Amit Goel is Director of Product Management for Autonomous Machines at NVIDIA, where he leads the product development of NVIDIA Jetson, the most advanced platform for AI computing at the edge.

Amit has more than 15 years of experience in the technology industry working in both software and hardware design roles. Prior to joining NVIDIA in 2011, he worked as a senior software engineer at Synopsys, where he developed algorithms for statistical performance modeling of digital designs.

Amit holds a Bachelor of Engineering in electronics and communication from Delhi College of Engineering, a Master of Science in electrical engineering from Arizona State University, and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley.

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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. They discuss how The Routing Company helps cities meet the needs of their people, the technical ins and outs of their dispatcher and assignment system, and the importance of public transit to cities and their economics.

Alex Wallar

Alex Wallar is Co-founder and CTO of the Routing Company, an on-demand vehicle routing and management platform that partners with cities to power the future of public transit. Previously he was pursuing a PhD in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, conducting research on mathematical optimization for high-capacity ride-sharing.

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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.

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RE2 Sapien 6M Robot Arm

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.

Travis Schneider
Travis Schneider, Business Development Manager at RE2 Robotics (RE2), works to foster commercial B2B partnerships with groups interested in leveraging RE2’s robotic technology for applications in a wide variety of markets, including aviation, construction, energy, and medical. With a background in Mechanical Engineering, Travis has an intimate knowledge of many of the fundamentals associated with robotic systems including electromechanical design, motion control, and associated software.

Links

• RE2 Robotics
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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.

Maxime Gariel

Maxime Gariel is the CTO of Xwing, a San Francisco based startup whose mission is to dramatically increase human mobility using fully autonomous aerial vehicles. Xwing is developing a Detect-And-Avoid system for unmanned and remotely piloted vehicles. Maxime is a pilot but he is passionate about making airplanes fly themselves.

Maxime joined Xwing from Rockwell Collins where he was a Principal GNC Engineer. He worked on autonomous aircraft projects including DARPA Gremlins and the AgustaWestland SW4 Solo autonomous helicopter. Before becoming Chief Engineer of the SW4 Solo’s flight control system, he was in charge of the system architecture, redundancy, and safety for the project.

Before Rockwell Collins, he worked on ADS-B based conflict detection as a postdoc at MIT and on autoland systems for airliners at Thales. Maxime earned his MS and PhD in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech and his BS from ISAE-Supaéro (France).

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Intel RealSense ID was designed with privacy as a top priority. Purpose-built for user protection, Intel RealSense ID processes all facial images locally and encrypts all user data. (Credit: Intel Corporation)

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.

Joel Hagberg

Joel Hagberg leads the Intel® RealSense Marketing. Product Management and Customer Support teams. He joined Intel in 2018 after a few years as an Executive Advisor working with startups in the IoT, AI, Flash Array, and SaaS markets. Before his Executive Advisor role, Joel spent two years as Vice President of Product Line Management at Seagate Technology with responsibility for their $13B product portfolio. He joined Seagate from Toshiba, where Joel spent 4 years as Vice President of Marketing and Product Management for Toshiba’s HDD and SSD product lines. Joel joined Toshiba with Fujitsu’s Storage Business acquisition, where Joel spent 12 years as Vice President of Marketing, Product Management, and Business Development. Joel’s Business Development efforts at Fujitsu focused on building emerging market business units in Security, Biometric Sensors, H.264 HD Video Encoders, 10GbE chips, and Digital Signage. Joel earned his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Math from the University of Maryland. Joel also graduated from Fujitsu’s Global Knowledge Institute Executive MBA leadership program.

Links

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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.

Matt Bilksy

Matt Bilsky, PhD, PE is the inventor of the FLX BOT, a licensed Professional Engineer, a Mechanical Engineering professor at Lehigh University, and a former repair/maintenance contractor. In 2017, he was awarded with the Lehigh University Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year. Matt has a Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. from Lehigh University focused on smart product design, Technical Entrepreneurship, and mechatronics. He holds two additional Lehigh degrees: a BS in Mechanical Engineering with an Electrical Engineering minor and a Master of Engineering degree also in Mechanical Engineering. Since he was a child Matt has been an innovator. In his basement shop he designed and built numerous electronic gadgets. In 2003 he started his first company, Mattcomp Services LLC, offering computer repair, networking, home theater, and handyman services. He also created a web hosting company in 2005, Mattcomp Hosting, including all necessary back-end components on dedicated servers.

Links

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• FLX Solutions
• FLX Youtube channel
• Matt’s Portfolio
• Matt’s Youtube channel

Image credit: J. Blumenkamp, Q. Li, H. Zhong

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.

Amanda Prorok

Amanda Prorok is an Assistant Professor (University Lecturer) in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Pembroke College. She serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (R-AL) and Associate Editor for Autonomous Robots (AURO). Prior to joining Cambridge, Prorok was a postdoctoral researcher at the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, where she worked with Prof. Vijay Kumar. She completed her PhD at EPFL, Switzerland, with Prof. Alcherio Martinoli.

Links

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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.

Dr. Tessa Lau

Dr. Tessa Lau is an experienced entrepreneur with expertise in AI, machine learning, and robotics. She is currently Founder/CEO at Dusty Robotics, a construction robotics company building robot-powered tools for the modern construction workforce. Prior to Dusty, she was CTO/co-founder at Savioke, where she orchestrated the deployment of 75+ delivery robots into hotels and high-rises. Previously, Dr. Lau was a Research Scientist at Willow Garage, where she developed simple interfaces for personal robots. She also spent 11 years at IBM Research working in business process automation and knowledge capture. More generally, Dr. Lau is interested in technology that gives people super-powers, and building businesses that bring that technology into people’s lives. Dr. Lau was recognized as one of the Top 5 Innovative Women to Watch in Robotics by Inc. in 2018 and one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in 2015. Dr. Lau holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

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In this podcast series of episodes we are going to explain how to create a robotics startup step by step.

We are going to learn how to select your co-founders, your team, how to look for investors, how to test your ideas, how to get customers, how to reach your market, how to build your product… Starting from zero, how to build a successful robotics startup.

I’m Ricardo Tellez, CEO and co-founder of The Construct startup, a robotics startup at which we deliver the best learning experience to become a ROS Developer, that is, to learn how to program robots with ROS.

Our company is already 5 years long, we are a team of 10 people working around the world. We have more than 100.000 students, and tens of Universities around the world use our online academy to provide the teaching environment to their students.

We have bootstrapped our startup, but we also (unsuccessfully) tried getting investors. We have done a few pivots and finally ended at the point that we are right now.

With all this experience, I’m going to teach you how to build your own startup. And we are going to go through the process by creating ourselves another startup, so you can see in the path how to create your own. So you are going to witness the creation of such robotics startup.

This episode is about deciding the product your startup will produce.

Related links

• Why robotics startups fail, document made by Fresh
• Jibo robot
• Cozmo robot
• Baxter robot

Subscribe to the podcast using any of the following methods

• ROS Developers Podcast on iTunes
• ROS Developers Podcast on Stitcher
• ROS Developers Podcast on Spotify

Or watch the video

The post 89. How to build a robotics startup: the product idea appeared first on The Construct.

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.

Anni Kern

Anni Kern, CYBATHLON Head of Communication, Strategy, Teams and CYBATHLON @school. ETH Zurich is the inventor of the CYBATHLON project. The CYBATHLON offers a platform to advance research in the field of assistive technology and to promote dialogue with the public about the inclusion of people with disabilities in everyday life. The core of CYBATHLON of ETH Zurich is a unique competition in which people with physical disabilities compete against each other to complete everyday tasks using state-of-the-art technical assistance systems. At the CYBATHLON 2016, Anni Kern was responsible for the coordination and the support of the participating international CYBATHLON teams. Since 2017 she is among others responsible for the strategy, communication, conception of the live event as well as the CYBATHLON @school programme.

Links

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• Youtube channel
• Twitter: @cybathlon
• Facebook: @cybathlon 
• Insta: cybathlon_eth_zurich
• Linkedin: cybathlon

Image from B. Thomaszewski, S. Pabst and W. Strasser

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.

Bernhard Thomaszewski

CREDIT: AMÉLIE PHILIBERT

Bernhard Thomaszewski is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at the University of Montréal. Until June 2017, he was a Research Scientist at Disney Research Zurich, heading the group on Computational Design and Digital Fabrication. Thomaszewski obtained his Master’s degree and PhD (Dr. rer. nat) in Computer Science from the University of Tübingen. Before joining Disney, he spent a year at the computer graphics group at ETH Zürich.

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Interesting discussion with Prof. Ali Khademhosseini, CEO of the Terasaki Institute, and one of the pioneers of the Bioengineering field. Prof. Ali’s journey from Harvard and UCLA to the Terasaki Institute is truly inspiring. What does the institute do to bring a product to the real world? Learn about the design challenges of biomaterials, organs on a chip, and soft robotics in this episode of the IEEE RAS Soft Robotics Podcast.

You can also listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and explore support options on Patreon.

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.

Benjamin “Pietro” Filardo
After several years in the architectural profession, Pietro founded Pliant Energy Systems to explore renewable energy concepts he first pondered while earning his first degree in marine biology and oceanography. With funding from four federal agencies he has broadened the application of these concepts into marine propulsion and a highly novel robotics platform.

Links

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Interesting discussion with Hod Lipson, head of Creative Machines Lab, Columbia University in New York. Can robots be self-aware? Can they design other robots and self-repair? Why should we evolve robots to do tasks that animals do so well? Why don’t we have useful autonomous robots in the real world yet? Find out Hod’s answers to these questions and updates on VoxCAD development for designing and simulation of soft robots in this episode of the IEEE RAS Soft Robotics Podcast.

What’s more, Hod gave his personal advice to roboticists being interviewed for an assistant professorship and to 1st-year robotics PhD students looking for a thesis topic, and he also commented on his approach to the ethical dilemma of military funding scientific research. I hope you enjoy listening to the episode! You can check Hod Lipson’s portfolio here: https://www.hodlipson.com/

You can also listen to this podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and explore support options on Patreon.

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

Benjamin “Pietro” Filardo
After several years in the architectural profession, Pietro founded Pliant Energy Systems to explore renewable energy concepts he first pondered while earning his first degree in marine biology and oceanography. With funding from four federal agencies he has broadened the application of these concepts into marine propulsion and a highly novel robotics platform.

Links

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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.

Kim Baraka

Kim Baraka is a postdoctoral researcher in the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, and an upcoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he will be part of the Social Artificial Intelligence Group. Baraka recently graduated with a dual PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, USA, and the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Lisbon, Portugal. At CMU, Baraka was part of the Robotics Institute and was advised by Prof. Manuela Veloso. At IST, he was part of the Group on AI for People and Society (GAIPS), and was advised by Prof. Francisco Melo.

Dr. Baraka’s research focuses on computational methods that inform artificial intelligence within Human-Robot Interaction. He develops approaches for knowledge transfer between humans and robots in order to support mutual and beneficial relationships between the robot and human. Specifically, he has conducted research in assistive interactions where the robot or human helps their partner to achieve a goal, and in teaching interactions. Baraka is also a contemporary dancer, with an interest in leveraging lessons from dance to inform advances in robotics, or vice versa.

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PS. If you enjoy listening to experts in robotics and asking them questions, we recommend that you check out Talking Robotics. They have a virtual seminar on Dec 11 where they will be discussing how to conduct remote research for Human-Robot Interaction; something that is very relevant to researchers working from home due to COVID-19.

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.

Jivko Sinapov

Jivko Sinapov received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Human-Computer Interaction from Iowa State University (ISU). While working toward his Ph.D. at ISU’s Developmental Robotics Lab, he developed novel methods for behavioral object exploration and multi-modal perception. He went on to be a clinical assistant professor with the Texas Institute for Discovery, Education, and Science at UT Austin and a postdoctoral associate working with Peter Stone at the Artificial Intelligence lab. Sinapov’s research interests include developmental robotics, computational perception, autonomous manipulation, and human-robot interaction.

Links

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An illustration of a concept for a possible wind-powered Venus rover.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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.

Jonathan Sauder

Jonathan Sauder is a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Fellow and Senior Mechatronics Engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in the Technology Infusion Group focused on innovative concepts.  He is also a lecturer of “Design Theory and Methodology” and “Advanced Mechanical Design” at the University of Southern California, where he received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering.

Links

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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.

Josh Lessing

Josh is one of the world’s leading minds on developing robotics and AI systems for the food industry, previously serving as the Director of R&D at Soft Robotics Inc. His current venture, Root AI, is integrating advanced robotics, vision systems and machine perception to automate agriculture. Josh was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Materials Science & Robotics at Harvard University, having earned his Ph.D. studying Biophysics & Physical Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received an Sc.B. in Chemistry from Brown University.

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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.

Eric Diller

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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.

Ayanna Howard
Ayanna Howard is a Professor and Chair of the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Professor Howard is the director and founder of the Human-Automation Systems (HumAnS) Laboratory. Her research focuses on humanized intelligence, with a wide range of applications from Human-Robot Interaction to science-driven robotics. Prior to Georgia Tech, she led research projects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Professor Howard is also a founder and the CTO of the educational robotics company Zyrobotics.

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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.

Gennaro Notomista

Photo from news.gatech.edu

Gennaro Notomista is a robotics PhD student in the Georgia Robotics and InTelligent Systems Laboratory at Georgia Tech. Gennaro studies control frameworks, with the goal of making robots robust against a changing environment so they can handle long-duration deployments. Toward this goal, he explores constraints-driven control and approaches to coverage control, or enabling robots to traverse closed environments.  In addition to the SlothBot, Gennaro has applied his research to areas such as autonomous driving and swarm robotics.

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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.

Muralidharan Arikara

Muralidharan Arikara is an entrepreneur and the CEO of Xarpie Labs. Arikara is an engineer by training, and worked in the clean energy industry prior to his current role. In addition to his role as CEO at Xarpie Labs, he is also a member of the advisory board of several startups in the energy and consumer segments.

Links

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• LinkedIn
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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.

William Crowe

William Crowe is CEO of High Earth Orbit Robotics, a company that performs health checks on satellites by assessing data on images they take from other satellites. He has a PhD in Astrodynamics, where his research focused on the use of swarms to characterize asteroids, especially those that fly closer than the Moon. William sees a future where we use the resources of space in space to better our Earth.

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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.

Erin Bishop

Erin operates at the intersection of product management, project engineering, customer development, and product-market fit within 3D camera company Sense Photonics. Over the past several years, she has worked to initiate the market appetite for telepresence robots, indoor mobile robots, and robotic picking in warehouses. Erin has made appearances at CES, UX Week, RoboBusiness, HardwareCon, and Mobile Future Forward.

Erin creates partnerships that result in large-scale deployment of the company’s revolutionary solid-state FLASH architecture. Prior to joining Sense, she held product manager, marketing, and research roles with several robotics companies, including Industrial Perception, Inc. – which was acquired by Google in 2013 – Adept Technology, iRobot, and DEKA. Erin earned her Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from UMass Lowell, where she performed extensive research in Human-Robot Interaction.

Links

• Video of Solid State Lidar in action
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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.

Luca Colasanto

Luca Colasanto is a Sr. Scientist at Realtime Robotics focusing on AI-based grasping and multi-robot optimization. Luca completed his PhD in Humanoid Robotics at Italian Institute of Technology, focusing on control systems for bipedal walking machines and compliant actuators. During the past ten years, Luca has worked with successful startups to design and prototype new robotics products, and with science and technology leaders, such as Robert Bosch LLC (CA), Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (FL), and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), He is the listed inventor in two patent applications and the author of several scientific publications. Luca speaks four languages and is a keen traveler, having visited or lived in more than 20 countries.

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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.

Here is a 2017 montage of how MoveIt has been used:

Dave Coleman

Dave Coleman completed his PhD in Computer Science at CU Boulder focusing on motion planning and his B.S. at Geogia Tech in Mechanical Engineering. Coleman has 12 years experience working in the field of robotics automation and is a leader in the open source MoveIt and ROS communities. His insights into robot-agnostic platforms for different morphologies, theoretical approaches, and different end-user requirements give him a well-rounded understanding for powerful robotic software. He has worked and consulted for all types of robotics companies including Google Robotics, Open Robotics, and Willow Garage.

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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.

Farrell Helbling

Farrell Helbling is a post doctoral fellow at Harvard University, where she focuses on the systems-level design of the Harvard RoboBee, an insect-scale flapping wing robot. Her research looks at the integration of the control system, sensors, and power electronics within the strict weight and power constraints of the vehicle. Her work led to the first untethered flight of an insect scale vehicle and was recently featured on the cover of Nature. She is the recipient of a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a 2018 Rising Star in EECS, and co-author on the IROS 2015 Best Student Paper for an insect-scale, hybrid aerial-aquatic vehicle. Her work on the RoboBee project is also featured at the Boston Museum of Science, World Economic Forum, London Science Museum, and the Smithsonian, as well as in the popular press (PBS NewsHour, The New York Times, Science Friday, BBC, and Wired). She is interested in the codesign of mechanical and electrical systems for mass-, power-, and computation-constrained robots.

Links

• Harvard Biorobotics Lab
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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.

Jeannette Bohg is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. She was a group leader at MPI until September 2017 and remains affiliated as a guest researcher. Her research focuses on perception for autonomous robotic manipulation and grasping. She is specifically interested in developing methods that are goal-directed, real-time and multi-modal such that they can provide meaningful feedback for execution and learning.

Before joining the Autonomous Motion lab in January 2012, Jeannette Bohg was a PhD student at the Computer Vision and Active Perception lab (CVAP) at KTH in Stockholm. Her thesis on Multi-modal scene understanding for Robotic Grasping was performed under the supervision of Prof. Danica Kragic. She studied at Chalmers in Gothenburg and at the Technical University in Dresden where she received her Masters in Art and Technology and her Diploma in Computer Science, respectively.

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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.

Janet Vertessi

Janet Vertesi specializes in the sociology of science, knowledge, and technology. She has spent the past 7 years studying several NASA spacecraft teams as an ethnographer. Her book, Seeing like a Rover: Images and Interaction on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission (Chicago, 2014) draws on over two years of ethnographic immersion with the Mars Exploration Rover mission to show how scientists and engineers use digital images to conduct scientific research on another planet. She is currently working on followup study of the NASA-ESA Cassini mission to Saturn focusing on the role of sociotechnical organization in research, data-sharing, and decision-making on robotic spacecraft teams. Vertesi is also interested in the digital sociology: whether studying computational systems in social life, shifting sociological methods online, or applying sociological insights to build new technologies.  She holds a Master’s degree from Cambridge and a PhD from Cornell, has received several grants from the National Science Foundation, and was awarded the Hacker-Mullins prize for best graduate student paper from the American Sociological Association, Science, Knowledge and Technology section in 2007.

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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.

Kajal Gada

Kajal Gada is a software engineer at BrainCorp. She works on developing algorithms for realizing robotic operations in the real world. Kajal received her Masters in Robotics from University of Maryland – College Park, and also has an MBA in Technology Management from NMIMS, Mumbai. She is an advocate for women in the workplace and has spoken at GHC in 2018. In her free time, she loves to read mystery novels and work on puzzles

Links

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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.

David Mindell

David co-founded Humatics with a mission to revolutionize how people and machines locate, navigate and collaborate. He is a professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, as well as the Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, and Chair of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future. He has participated in more than 25 oceanographic expeditions and is an inventor on 8 patents in autonomous helicopters, AI-assisted piloting, and RF navigation. He is the author of five books, including Our Robots, Ourselves:Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy (2015) and Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight (2008). David has undergraduate degrees from Yale and a Ph.D. from MIT.

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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.

Vijay Kumar

Vijay Kumar is the Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering with appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Computer and Information Science, and Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Kumar’s group works on creating autonomous ground and aerial robots, designing bio-inspired algorithms for collective behaviors, and on robot swarms. They have won many best paper awards at conferences, and group alumni are leaders in teaching, research, business and entrepreneurship. Kumar is a fellow of ASME and IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Vijay Kumar has held many administrative positions in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, including director of the GRASP Laboratory, chair of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, and the position of the Deputy Dean. He served as the assistant director of robotics and cyber physical systems at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

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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.

Heather Culbertson

Heather Culbertson is a Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on the design and control of haptic devices and rendering systems, human-robot interaction, and virtual reality. Particularly she is interested in creating haptic interactions that are natural and realistically mimic the touch sensations experienced during interactions with the physical world. Previously, she was a research scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University where she worked in the Collaborative Haptics and Robotics in Medicine (CHARM) Lab. She received her PhD in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) at the University of Pennsylvania in 2015 working in the Haptics Group, part of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory.

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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.

Patrícia Alves-Oliveira

Patrícia Alves-Oliveira is an upcoming postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Maya Cakmak in the Human-Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Washington. She recently completed her PhD in Human-Robot Interaction at the Lisbon University Institute supervised by Profs. Ana Paiva and Patrícia Arriaga, also working as a visiting scholar in the Human-Robot Collaboration and Companionship Laboratory at Cornell University, supervised by Professor Guy Hoffman. Patrícia’s research focuses on the use of social robots as intervention tools to enrich creative behaviors in children. Patrícia’s overarching goal as a Human-Robot Interaction researcher is to investigate how and where robots can be used to empower innate human qualities and experiences.

Links

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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.

Juxi Leitner

Juxi Leitner is co-founder of LYRO Robotics, a deep-tech startup based in Brisbane, Australia, creating robotic picking and packing solutions. LYRO is a spin-out of the Australian Centre of Excellence for Robotic Vision (ACRV), where Juxi is the research lead for the manipulation research stream (previously Vision and Action project). His research focus is on integrating Robotics, Computer Vision and Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence (AI) for robust grasping and manipulation in real-world scenarios. In 2017 his team won the Amazon Robotics Challenge. Juxi is active in the local Brisbane deep-tech ecosystem and started Brisbane.AI and the Brisbane robotics interest group.

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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.

Below is a video that includes Shimon on marimba, Jason Barnes playing drums with a prostetic, and Prof. Gil Weinberg on bass guitar.

Gil Weinberg

Gil Weinberg is a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Music and the founding director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, where he leads the Robotic Musicianship group. His research focuses on developing artificial creativity and musical expression for robots and augmented humans. Among his projects are a marimba playing robotic musician called Shimon that uses machine learning for jazz improvisation, and a prosthetic robotic arm for amputees that restores and enhances human drumming abilities. Weinberg has presented his work worldwide in venues such as The Kennedy Center, The World Economic Forum, Ars Electronica, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Museum, SIGGRAPH, TED-Ed, DLD and others. His music has been performed with orchestras such as Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the National Irish Symphony Orchestra, and the Scottish BBC Symphony while his research has been disseminated through numerous journal articles and patents. Weinberg received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and his B.A. from the interdisciplinary program for fostering excellence in Tel Aviv University.

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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.

First up, Sabine Hauert, one of Professor Floreano’s former students, now, Assistant Professor in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory at the University of Bristol in the UK. Sabine, whose work focuses on swarm robotics, is also acting President and Co-founder of Robohub.org. She spoke to our interviewer Lilly.

Next, our interviewer and current podcast President Audrow caught up with Peter Dürr, who now leads a team in Switzerland focused on Computer Vision research, whilst remaining active with the podcast by editing all of our episodes.

And last, but definitely not least, Andra Keay, Managing Director of non-profit industry group Silicon Valley Robotics, and long standing member of Robohub, spoke to our interviewer Lauren about her company, and women in robotics.

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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.

Catharina Vesterager Smedegaard

Catharina Vesterager Smedegaard started as a PhD-student the 1st of December 2017. She has a BA and MA in philosophy. In autumn 2015, Catharina interned at the research group PENSOR (the present RUR), where she first became interested in Social Robotics and formed the idea for her MA thesis.

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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.

Marlyse Reeves

Marlyse is a third-year PhD student in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. She received her B.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 2017. Her current research in the Model-based Embedded and Robotic Systems Group focuses on multi-vehicle online planning, incorporating complex dynamics and constraints. She is also interested in risk-aware planning, fault protection and diagnosis, and adaptive sampling. Outside of the lab, she enjoys playing soccer, dancing, and reading science fiction.

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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.

Links

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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.

Nicholas Roy

Nicholas Roy is the Bisplinghoff Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, and leads the Robust Robotics Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He received a BS and MS from McGill University, and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests span robotics, machine learning, planning and reasoning, and human-computer interaction.

 
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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.

Rand Voorhies

Rand Voorhies is the CTO and a founder of inVia Robotics, where he leads the engineering team in developing the software which drives their system of autonomous robots. Voorhies received his PhD in computer science from the University of Southern California, where he conducted robotics research with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Source: CC0

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.

Links

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• Advanced Micro and Nano Systems Laboratory
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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.

Brian Gerkey

Brian Gerkey is the CEO of Open Robotics, which seeks to develop and drive the adoption of open source software in robotics. Before Open Robotics, Brian was the Director of Open Source Development at Willow Garage, a computer scientist in the SRI Artificial Intelligence Center, a post-doctoral scholar in Sebastian Thrun‘s group in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab.  Brian did his PhD with Maja Matarić in the USC Interaction Lab.

Links

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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.

Michal Luria

Michal Luria is a PhD candidate in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Professors Jodi Forlizzi and John Zimmerman. Michal’s research centers on exploring alternative ways for humans to interact with agents and social robots. Prior to her PhD, Michal studied Interactive Communication at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel.

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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.

The guests in the order they appear are:
Vince Martinelli, Head of Product and Marketing, RightHand Robotics
Jim Liefer, CEO, Kindred
Pete Blair, VP of Marketing, Berkshire Grey
Sean Davis, Technical Product Manager, Osaro
Erik Nieves, CEO, Plus One Robotics

See video of each robot picking items on our YouTube page:

Links

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• Kindred Website
• Berkshire Grey’s Website
• Osaro’s Website
• PlusOne Robotics’ Website
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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.

Bilge Mutlu

Bilge Mutlu is an Associate Professor of Computer Science, Psychology, and Industrial Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He directs the Wisconsin HCI Laboratory and organizes the WHCI+D Group. He received his PhD degree from Carnegie Mellon University‘s Human-Computer Interaction Institute.

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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.

Below are two videos showing the Robonomics Platform in action via a fully autonomous robot artist and drones for environmental monitoring.

Aleksandr Kapitonov

Aleksandr Kapitonov is a “robot economics” academic society progressor at Airalab (the team behind Robonomics Platform), an assistant professor of Control Systems and Robotics at ITMO University, and regional coordinator of the Erasmus+ IOT-OPEN.EU project for researching and developing IoT education practices. His research focuses on navigation, computer vision, control of mobile robots and communication for multi-agents systems.

Links

• Download mp3 (17.7 MB)
• Robot Operating System introduction course
• Blockchain course from Linux Foundation
• Robonomics winter school
• Kapitonov’s Plenary speech at Blockchain for Robots Symposium

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.

Below are two videos of Eve. The first is a video of how Eve can be used as a platform to address several research questions.  The second shows Eve moving a box and dancing.

Bernt Børnich

Photographer: Tonje Kornelie

Bernt Børnich is the CEO and CTO of Halodi Robotics, and the inventor of their Revo1 motors. He holds a bachelor of robotics and nano-electronics from the University of Oslo.

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