The Engineering Challenge of Bringing Down Cost of a Robot

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The transition from an R&D company to a commercial company, that's the thing you worry about. The big takeaway lesson for me is we have good people who want to solve problems. And because they're so invested in what we're doing, they're interested in and will go work on those problems as well.

Robert Playter is CEO of Boston Dynamics, a legendary robotics company that over 30 years has created some of the most elegant, dextrous, and simply amazing robots ever built, including the humanoid robot Atlas and the robot dog Spot. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(07:18) – Early days of Boston Dynamics
(15:39) – Simplifying robots
(19:37) – Art and science of robotics
(24:20) – Atlas humanoid robot
(41:14) – DARPA Robotics Challenge
(55:34) – BigDog robot
(1:09:23) – Spot robot
(1:30:48) – Stretch robot
(1:33:36) – Handle robot
(1:39:10) – Robots in our homes
(1:47:57) – Tesla Optimus robot
(1:56:39) – ChatGPT
(1:59:43) – Boston Dynamics AI Institute
(2:01:14) – Fear of robots
(2:11:36) – Running a company
(2:17:13) – Consciousness
(2:24:46) – Advice for young people
(2:26:42) – Future of robots