Robohub Podcast

In this episode, Jack Rasiel speaks with Kostas Bekris, who introduces us to tensegrity robotics: a striking robotic design which straddles the boundary between hard and soft robotics. A structure uses tensegrity if it is made of a number of isolated rigid elements which are held in compression by a network of elements that are in tension. Bekris, an Associate Professor of Computer Science, draws from a diverse set of problems to find innovative new ways to control tensegrity robots.

#240: Biowatch: Biometric Identification Using Veins, with Matthias Vanoni

In this episode, MeiXing Dong interviews Matthias Vanoni, co-founder and CEO of Biowatch. Vanoni speaks about Biowatch, a wrist-veins biometric reader that functions as a security solution for mobile payments and smart devices. They discuss the technical challenges of building a miniaturized wrist-vein reader and how this device changes the usual user authentication process.

#239: Robot Academy, with Peter Corke

In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Peter Corke, Professor of Robotics at the Queensland University of Technology and Director of the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision, about Robot Academy. Robot Academy is an online platform that provides free-to-use undergraduate-level learning resources for robotics and robotic vision.

#238: Midwest Speech and Language Days 2017 Posters, with Michael White, Dmitriy Dligach and Denis Newman-Griffiths

In this episode, MeiXing Dong conducts interviews at the 2017 Midwest Speech and Language Days workshop in Chicago. She talks with Michael White of Ohio State University about question interpretation in a dialogue system; Dmitriy Dligach of Loyola University Chicago about extracting patient timelines from doctor’s notes; and Denis Newman-Griffiths of Ohio State University about connecting words and phrases to relevant medical topics.

#237: Deep Learning in Robotics, with Sergey Levine

In this episode, Audrow Nash interviews Sergey Levine, assistant professor at UC Berkeley, about deep learning on robotics. Levine explains what deep learning is and he discusses the challenges of using deep learning in robotics. Lastly, Levine speaks about his collaboration with Google and some of the surprising behavior that emerged from his deep learning approach (how the system grasps soft objects). In addition to the main interview, Audrow interviewed Levine about his professional path. They spoke about what questions motivate him, why his PhD experience was different to what he had expected, the value of self-directed learning,  work-life balance, and what he wishes he’d known in graduate school.

#236: IASP 2016: Prostheses and Finding Shoes, with Vadim Kotenev and Vagan Martirosyan

In this episode, Audrow Nash and Christina Brester conduct interviews at the 2016 International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation conference in Moscow, Russia. They speak with Vadim Kotenev of Rehabot and Motorica about prosthetic hands and rehabilatative devices; and Vagan Martirosyan, CEO of TryFit, a company that uses robotic sensors to help people find shoes that fit them well.

#235: Locus Robotics, with Rick Faulk

In this episode, Abate De Mey speaks with Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics, about warehouse automation with collaborative robots. At Locus Robotics, they increase the productivity of workers in e-commerce warehouses by using robot helpers to transport items that are passed to them by the workers. The lightweight autonomous robots move at a similar pace to their co-workers, use LIDAR and computer vision to detect people and avoid collisions. This allows people to share the warehouse floor with the robots. The collaborative robotic system is lightweight and can be adapted to existing warehouses with minimal alterations.

#234: Trik Embedded Platform, with Roman Luchin

In this episode, Audrow Nash and Christina Brester conduct interviews at the 2016 International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation conference in Moscow, Russia. They speak with Roman Luchin, CEO of CyberTech Labs., about a robotics development platform called Trik. Trik is intended to be an intermediate step when learning about robotics between Lego Mindstorms and programming on an embedded platform. Trik allows users to program with a graphical interface by ordering blocks. These blocks contain code in several common programming languages (python, F#, Pascal, etc.) and the code can be modified directly. This is the second of three interviews from the conference.