Do you have to reinvent the wheel every time you build a robot? Or can you reuse significant components of functionality like vision, navigation, manual dexterity, and control software? It turns out that the answer is that you don't have to continually reinvent the wheel. And the result of asking that question was the creation of what might be the world’s first robot venture factory In, of course, Odense, Denmark, an island with perhaps the world’s greatest density of robotic startups and creators. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Blue Ocean Robotics: https://www.blue-ocean-robotics.com TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

The X Shore Eelex 8000 cruises 20 hours on battery power. It knows when you fall overboard, it won't go beyond geo-fences that you set up. It offers autopilot and it goes 35 knots or 65 kilometers an hour flat out.  It has a modular design and will save you about $800 every time you "fuel up" In this episode of tech first, we're chatting with Jenny Keisu, the CEO of X Shore, which has just released the ELX 8,000 electric boat and raised $17 million to bring it to a harbor near you. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ X Shore: https://www.xshore.com/ TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Clubhouse is the hot new social audio star. But Twitter Spaces is available to 30X the audience out of the box … and draws on a social graph you already own. Does that mean it’s the new winner just waiting to be crowned? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with Paul Armstrong, CEO and founder of Here/Forth … and owner of the very first sponsored show on Twitter Spaces … sponsored by a Fortune 500 global brand, too yet. At least, as far as Armstrong knows. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

Punching something is probably a good way of blowing off steam, as long as it's an inanimate object and you're not hurting anyone. It's also a surprisingly good workout. In this episode I try out Fight Camp's smart boxing fitness program and chat with the founder, former US National Team member Tommy Duquette ... now founder and CEO of Fight Camp. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

Moore's Law is dead, right? Not if we can get working photonic computers. Lightmatter is building a photonic computer for the biggest growth area in computing right now, and according to CEO Nick Harris, it can be ordered now and will ship at the end of this year. It's already much faster than traditional electronic computers a neural nets, machine learning for language processing, and AI for self-driving cars. It's the world's first general purpose photonic AI accelerator, and with light multiplexing -- using up to 64 different colors of light simultaneously -- there's long path of speed improvements ahead. Links: TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

I take a virtual tour of a virtual learning environment from The Leadership Network based on a collaboration they're doing with Toyota. Is this the future, or is it more like Microsoft Mesh's rich, textured, augmented reality? There's probably multiple modalities for the future of meetings and collaborative remote work. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I get a tour of TLN's Gemba VR learning and training environment, and compare it to Microsoft Mesh. Episode links: The Leadership Network: https://theleadershipnetwork.com  TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1

We have synthetic humans earning millions as influencers and models who are created by a computer. What’s driving this … and where’s it all going? To dig in, we’re chatting with Tyler Lastovich, who leads strategy at Generated Photos. Generated Photos makes realistic faces via AI: generative adversarial networks. They're growing incredibly fast, count most major gaming companies as their customers, and are talking to major social media outlets as well. The market right now is for synthetic models and characters, but in the future is probably as large as the world: avatars for all of us in an augmented reality and virtual reality world. We chat about the growth, the implications, the ethical considerations, and much, much more. Episode links: TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1

Would you wear a computer on your head? In public? What if it made you more productive? Today on TechFirst with John Koetsier we’re chatting with Alex Castillo of  Neurosity, which just released the Crown. It's a brain-sensing computer you wear like a hat, and which … one day … may be a hat. Or … inserted under your skull like Elon Musk's Neuralink. Episode links: Neurosity: https://neurosity.co TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier  Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/

Nuport Robotics just landed a deal with Canada's largest retailer, Canadian Tire, and the Canadian government to test its self-driving truck capability. The technology uses lidar, cameras, and radar to guide trucks. And the company has a vision to make every truck self-driving ... not just brand-new ones coming right out of the factory. That's a big deal, because there's about 80 million trucks on the planet right now that don't have self-driving capability. And transport companies aren't going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for new trucks just for some new tech. Not, at least, if they can get it aftermarket. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with the CEO of Nuport, Raghavender Sahdev, about how his solution works, and what their new project with Canadian Tire means. Episode links: TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Nuport: https://www.nuport.ai Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier  Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/

Clubhouse is the media darling of the social audio world ... the hot date. Why? And … can Facebook and Twitter catch up? To get some answers, we’re chatting with Josh Constine. He's a former TechCrunch writer and editor-at-large who is now a venture capitalist at SignalFire. And ... Josh Constine is a Clubhouse influencer with 3.5M+ followers. Episode links: TechFirst transcripts (in about a week): https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1