The Robot Report Podcast

In this episode, we talk to Relay Robotics CEO Michael O'Donnell and CTO Steve Cousins about the features of the newly launched Relay2 delivery robot. O'Donnell discusses how the hotel foodservice market has changed during the pandemic and why third-party food delivery apps like Doordash have upended the room service market for hotels. The result is a renewed opportunity for a larger payload Relay robot to become an important addition to a hotel's service offerings for travelers. Cousins discusses the evolution of the elevator interface integration and the removal of the mechanical elevator-pushing interface that was a key part of the Relay1 robot.

This week we have the pleasure of interviewing Roberta Nelson Shea who was the 2023 Joseph F Engelberger Robotics Application Award winner. Roberta tells us some great stories from her career leading the development of worldwide robotics safety standards.

In this episode, we talk to Figure CEO and cofounder Brett Adcock about his vision for building general-purpose humanoid robots. The company recently closed its series A for $70M and is a year into the design and development of its first humanoid robot. This episode is sponsored by Cloud Ground Control.

In this episode, we go into detail about cloud-based control of remote fleets of outdoor robotics with an interview with Xavier Orr, CEO, of Advanced Navigation along with one of its customers: Michael Arens, co-founder and CEO of Clean Earth Rovers. Advanced Navigation has a portfolio of guidance sensors, a plug-and-play cellular modem, and the new Cloud Ground Control software.

This week, we recap the 2023 Robotics Summit event that took place last week in Boston. On the show, Mike Oitzman interviews Fox Robotics' new CEO Marin Tchakarov during a recent visit to Austin TX, and Mike also interviews Canvas Robotics' CEO and co-founder Kevin Albert about the innovation of using robots to help to finish dry wall at construction sites. This episode is sponsored by Cloud Ground Control, learn more at: https://www.cloudgroundcontrol.com/

Our guest this week is Christine Boles, Vice President in the Network & Edge Group (NEX) and General Manager of Intel’s Federal and Industrial Solutions. Robotics at Intel falls under Federal and Industrial Solutions, so Christine plays a pivotal role in developing Intel’s solutions roadmap for robotics developers. We talk to her about the key technologies available today from Intel, including software, hardware and sensors essential for robotics development. We’ll also learn what new technologies will be coming out from Intel in the near future.

In this episode, co-hosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman review some of their favorite 2023 RBR50 Innovation Award honorees, discussing innovation trends in robotics and what stands out as the state of the art in robotics development across the entire industry, from space robotics to your local grocery aisle.

In this episode, we review John Deere AgTech presented at the 2023 John Deere Technology Summit, and interview Jorge Heraud, VP of Autonomy at John Deere. Later in the episode we discuss the sensor and perception stack being developed to operate the Zoox autonomous vehicle with two of Zoox's technology leaders: RJ He and Ryan McMichael. If you love autonomous vehicles, this episode looks at the current state of AV technology in two of the key use cases.

This week, Steve and Mike recap all of the robotics-related technology on display at the 2023 ProMat tradeshow. Steve went to the show and shares his discoveries and some of the conversations with industry leaders. Mike reviews news from the NVIDIA GTC keynote and robotics-related news from NVIDIA.

In the news today, we talk about the breaking story about the impact of Silicon Valley Bank being closed and put into receivership by the FDIC and the impact that this is likely to have on technology startups and the VCs that support their growth. This rapidly evolving situation is likely to have repercussions for the tech industry the remainder of the year. Unrelated to the SVB story, we also interview Rylan Hamilton, co-founder and CEO of 6 River Systems about his start in robotics with Kiva Systems and how he started and built 6 River Systems into a leading AMR manufacturer that's now a major part of the Shopify family.