Season 2 of The Robot Report Podcast

Best of First 100 Episodes

100 Shows

Joel Johnson, the passenger inside the Waymo One robotaxi that was confused by construction cones, takes us inside what went wrong. He also talks about his overall experience with Waymo One, which includes 147 rides to date.

We also catch up with Tom Ryden, executive director of MassRobotics, who takes us inside the develop of the group's new mobile robot interoperability standard.

Passenger of confused Waymo robotaxi discusses what went wrong

Mike caught up with Melonee Wise, founder of Fetch Robotics and VP of robotics automation at Zebra Technologies, at the AMRs and Logistics Conference. They discussed the new Fetch FlexShelf, FlexShelf Guide, RollerTop Guide autonomous mobile robot solutions that came out this week, as well as the state of logistics automation.

We also discuss the news of the week, including Softbank reportedly negotiating the sale of its French robotics business, Softbank Robotics Europe, to German distributor United Robotics Group. We also discuss the new AMR solutions from Fetch Robotics, the historic IPO of AutoStore on the Oslo Stock Exchange and a couple of food-related automation items.

Show Notes
https://www.therobotreport.com/report-softbank-negotiating-sale-of-french-robotics-business/

https://www.therobotreport.com/fetch-robotics-adds-3-amrs-person-to-goods-workflows/

https://www.therobotreport.com/autostore-stock-surges-debut-oslo-stock-exchange/

https://www.therobotreport.com/spyce-closes-original-robotic-restaurant-in-boston/

Is Softbank Robotics Europe for Sale?; Melonee Wise on Fetch's New AMRs

In today's episode, Steve and Mike interview Alex Wischnewski, team lead for Technical University of Munich [TUM], and the winning race team at the 2021 Indy Autonomous Challenge.
Alex discusses how the team came together for the competition and the stress of race day when they had to make changes to the race parameters to balance speed with safe operations.
The Indy Autonomous Challenge turned out to be more difficult than anyone anticipated, and Alex provides a first hand view of pushing autonomous vehicles to the limit.
Steve and Mike also cover the latest robotics news stories from the last week.

Interview with IAC race winner Team TUM

Samir Menon, founder and CEO of Dexterity Inc. joins the program this week. We discuss Dexterity's rapid growth and its approach to developing full-stack robotic picking for logistics, supply chain, and warehousing applications. 

Mike and Steve also discuss some recent trending stories, including China's role is ending a potential autonomous vehicle SPAC.

https://www.therobotreport.com/spac-merger-plus-autonomous-trucks-called-off/

https://www.therobotreport.com/gatik-autonomous-box-trucks-milestone-walmart/

https://www.therobotreport.com/autonomous-racing-goes-head-to-head-at-the-autonomous-challenge-ces-in-las-vegas/

Dexterity founder Samir Menon; 2 SPACs fall apart due to China tech crackdown

Welcome to Episode 63  of The Robot Report Podcast, which brings conversations with robotics innovators straight to you. Join us each week for discussions with leading roboticists, innovative robotics companies, and other key members of the robotics community.

In today's episode, Steve and Mike interview robotics innovator Esben Østergaard, CEO of Reinvest Robotics and cofounder of Universal Robots. We discuss the potential impact of the pending EU AI Act and Machinery Directive. These directives are likely to impact the growth of AI startup in the EU and burden them with rules that will hamper innovation. Esben offers his thoughts about innovation and how successful robotics startups need a competitive playing field to be successful. Could this be the death of robotic and AI innovation in the EU? Listen in to learn more.

Here's a link to Esben's recent blog about the impact of the EU AI Act and Machinery Directive.

“The approach of the current machinery directive is sufficient. The problem is with governance. We recommend focusing on ensuring that products on the market actually comply with the current EU law, not creating new regulations,” said Østergaard.

Steve and Mike also review the latest robotics news stories from the last week, including the following stories reported on The Robot Report:

- Robotics Summit & Expo 2022 call for speakers
- MiR is building autonomous pallet jacks
- Knightscope IPO taking security robots public
- Serve Robotics closes $13 million funding round
- Nuro, Waymo bring autonomous deliveries to California

Esben Østergaard:  EU AI Act will stifle robotics innovation

Today’s episode recaps a major week for autonomous vehicles. Cruise co-founder, CTO and president Kyle Vogt hailed the first driverless robotaxi ride in SF, Waymo started to map New York City and Nuro raised another $600M for its autonomous delivery vehicles. And we don’t even mention Aurora debuting on the Nasdaq, FedEx testing autonomous delivery in China, and Autobrains raising $101 million for its unsupervised AI for autonomous vehicles.

You'll also hear from James DeSmet, president and CEO of CRG Automation. The company built a robotic system to help decommission a stockpile of 70,000 chemical missiles at a base in Kentucky. James walks us through the challenges of the project. 

Our favorite quote from the interview: “We’re just packaging a very dangerous chemical weapon instead of a Twinkie. It’s a little different, but it’s the same.” You can check out videos of the system in action over at CRG Automation’s YouTube channel.

Decommissioning chemical missiles with robots

This week, hosts Steve and Mike discuss the recent Cascadia connect event in Pittsburgh, where the announcement was made launching the the new US Alliance of Robotics Clusters. Mike had the opportunity to talk to Silicon Valley Robotics director Andra Keay and Pittsburgh Robotics Network director Joel Reed about the goals of the new organization.
Mike also visiting Pittsburgh robotics company Agility Robotics and had the opportunity to catch up with co-founder and CEO Damion Shelton,

Agility Robotics gets a boost from Amazon; The US Alliance of Robotics Clusters is born

Our guest this week is Brian Gerkey, CEO and co-founder of Open Robotics and one of creators of ROS. Brian tells us about the development and evolution of the Robot Operating System (ROS) and why open source software has played such a pivotal role in the growth of the robotics industry and in the acceleration of robotics research in university and corporate robotic labs around the world.

Brian Gerkey from Open Robotics discusses the development of ROS

Mike Dooley, co-founder and CEO of robotics startup Labrador Systems, joins the podcast. We discuss how Labrador built autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for home environments to help the elderly and those with mobility issues. Mike also discusses how his days at Evolution Robotics and iRobot helped shape some of the decisions being made at Labrador Systems.

Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman also dive into the recent layoffs and shutdowns that have impacted numerous robotics companies.

Inside the development of Labrador Systems' assistive robots

Nima Fazeli, assistant professor of robotics at the University of Michigan and director of the Manipulation and Machine Intelligence Lab, joins the program to discuss the flaws of the chess-playing robot that broke a 7-year-old's finger during a tournament in Russia. Fazeli helped develop a Jenga-playing robot while at MIT.

Mike and Steve also hit on the top stories of the week, including researchers using dead wolf spiders as mechanical grippers and another strong quarter for Teradyne's robotics group.

Show Notes
https://www.mmintlab.com/
https://www.therobotreport.com/mit-robot-uses-vision-touch-learn-jenga/
https://www.therobotreport.com/why-im-saying-no-to-necrobotics/
https://www.therobotreport.com/teradynes-robotics-group-101m-q2-2022/
https://www.therobotreport.com/locus-robotics-completes-soc-2-certification/
https://www.robobusiness.com/
https://www.fieldroboticsforum.com/

Jenga robot creator reviews chess-playing robot flaws

In this episode, we talk to Eliot Horowitz, founder and CEO of Viam Inc. Viam launched the open beta of its new robotics platform. Viam provides an open-source robot architecture that turns complex functionality into simple APIs, with an integrated cloud service to orchestrate production deployments.
Co-hosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman also discuss news of the week, includes the end of delivery robot testing with Amazon and Fedex.

Viam opens beta of new robotics platform; Amazon/FedEx end testing of delivery robots

In this episode, we discuss the news of the shutdown of Argo AI and the state of autonomous driving, including the upcoming IAC race event. Mike interviews Covariant.AI CEO, Peter Chen, and they discuss the new CovariantOne RaaS solution, that's based on performance SLAs for the Covariant warehouse solution.

Argo AI shuts down; Covariant CEO discusses new RaaS performance

Samantha Johnson, founder and CEO of Boston-based startup Tatum Robotics, describes the company's anthropomorphic robotic system designed to sign tactile sign languages for people with deafblindness - they can't hear or see. Johnson dives into the challenging system design and the opportunities for such technology. Samantha also discusses her passion for helping the deafblind community, educating us about some of the daily challenges of those living with deafblindness.

Inside Samantha Johnson's quest to build robots for deafblind people

In this episode, cohosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman talk to the co-founders of the Robotics Operations Group, affectionately known as "ROG" about the recent inaugural RobOpsCon.
The mission of ROG is to develop and share best practices for the operation at scale of autonomous robots.
Guests Florian Pestoni and Joe Wieciek talk to Mike about the growth of the group and the planning for the recent conference.
For more information check out: robops.org
We also talk about the news from the week, including a recent patent fight between "Robo dog" vendors Ghost Robotics and Boston Dynamics.

A conversation with the founders of RobOpsCon; a robo dog fight breaks out over patents

To celebrate our 100th episode, we look back at our favorite guests and moments. We also look ahead at what's next for the show.

Nic Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus Robotics, joins the show to discuss his team's development of underwater robots. Leveraging experience developing space robots for NASA, Nauticus' underwater robots can perform inspection and maintenance tasks and much more.

Nic Radford on developing underwater robots; Celebrating 100 episodes

Join Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman each week for discussions with leading roboticists, innovative robotics companies, and other key members of the robotics community.