In this episode, we sit down with Mika Saryan, VP of Engineering of Formic, a company that helps manufacturers grow their business by making it easy to afford, deploy, and profit from robotic automation.

Mika takes us on his beginnings, starting on automotive, entertainment, consumer devices, and eventually ending up on robotics.
Enjoy as he shares his passion about industrial automation, safety and the intersection between software and hardware.

Mika shares advice to aspiring engineers and entrepreneurs on the field. Telling them to go into the real world, building new things, staying in the lab it's not enough, because of how loud and unpredictable the world is.

Time Stamps
00:00 Machine Minds Show
1:25 Mika's background
2:40 The importance of safety in industrial automation
5:40 Challenges on Mika's career
8:00 Formic's mission
11:10 What makes Formic's offering unique?
17:40 Trends in the automation industry
23:05 Formic wanting to train operators, not displace them
25:10 Labor shortage in the manufacturing industry 
26:00 The future of robotics and AI
30:25 Mika's advice to aspiring engineers and new start-ups

Formic
https://formic.co/

More about our guest, Mika Saryan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mika-saryan/

Machine Minds:

Apple Podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/machine-minds/id1696335193
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/1apGh7xMItxo9UEYUwijZL?si=a6d2646c0f6540be
Google Podcast:
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8yMjEyMTQ4LnJzcw==
YouTube:
https://youtube.com/@machinemindsshow


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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregtoroosian/