The Robot Report Podcast

Ben Waters, CEO of WiBotic, discusses the infrastructure powering autonomous robot fleets. Topics include opportunity charging during natural idle time, battery size versus charging speed, designing power systems into robots, and scaling wireless charging from 1 to 3 kilowatts. He also explores drones, medical carts, outdoor robots, humanoids, safety certification, interoperability, and using fleet data to predict battery failure.

Janine Sinanan-Singh, Appen’s Director of Gen AI Research, explores the data and evaluation challenges facing robotics. They unpack why flashy humanoid demos often fail beyond rehearsed settings, the value of egocentric video and synthetic data, and the role of human judgment in capturing intent, recovery, and edge cases. They also discuss latency, long-horizon agents, multi-agent checks, and testing robots in the real world.

Miguel Garces Moreno, Omron’s EMEA Robotics Product Marketing Manager, explores Europe’s fast-changing robotics market. He discusses pharma automation, labor shortages, and competition beyond hardware prices. Learn about the LD150 and LD300, faster charging, smarter safety, AI-assisted navigation, mobile manipulators, mixed fleets, and why system integrators and interoperability are central to Omron’s roadmap.

Sai Vemprala, CTO of General Robotics and former Microsoft Research robotics scientist, explores the future of practical automation. He discusses why modular intelligence may outperform a single robot brain, how reusable skills adapt across machines, and the role of simulation, cloud-edge architecture, and agentic AI. The conversation also tackles enterprise data ownership and the challenges of deploying robots at scale.

Teddy Haggerty, founder and CEO of RoboStore and Robo Inc., brings experience spanning drones, crypto infrastructure, manufacturing and robotics. He explores the picks-and-shovels opportunity behind the robot boom, from education and training to integration and field service. The conversation covers localized, task-specific robots, modular software, humanoid commercialization, and why household robots remain years away.

Salar al Khafaji, CEO and founder of construction-tech company Monumental, reveals how a coordinated fleet of mobile robots lays bricks, applies mortar, and moves materials. He discusses selling “walls as a service,” using vision and BIM data on unpredictable sites, the rise of robot-wrangler careers, and plans to automate blockwork, insulation, roofing, and more.

Eric Sivertson, Lattice Semiconductor’s VP of Security, explores how FPGAs can safeguard physical AI, humanoids, and cyber-physical systems. The conversation covers deterministic hardware guardrails, cloud-connected robot risks, zero trust on factory floors, real-time monitoring, attestation, and recovery from compromised firmware. It also examines how humanoids could become both information and kinetic threats, making security essential from the earliest design stage.

John Black, CTO of BrainCorp, leads development of BrainOS and fleet-scale robot deployments. He discusses moving from single robots to a full-stack platform that supports many form factors. Conversation covers safety and guardrails for public spaces, the fleet data advantage, SelfPath AI for lifelong mapping and automated routes, and expanding from cleaning to inventory and manipulation applications.

Roby Lynn, founder and CEO of R2 Labs, builds the R2 Autonomy Controller to connect PLCs, robots, vision, and MES/ERP systems. He discusses software-defined manufacturing and how a single configurable platform bridges OT and IT. The conversation covers PLC longevity, where AI and vision add value, architecture of the RAC, and real-world integration and monitoring paths for factories.

Marc Kermisch, Chief Technology and AI Officer at Protolabs, leads software-driven rapid manufacturing and AI for production. He discusses linking CAD to tool paths and G-code, using AI and simulation to catch manufacturability issues, and tradeoffs between 3D printing, CNC, and injection molding. He also covers ProDesk feedback, part similarity search, and where AI already speeds inspection and cobot programming.