Robot Talk

Claire chatted to Keenan Wyrobek from Zipline about drones for delivering life-saving medicine to remote locations. Keenan Wyrobek is co-founder and head of product and engineering at Zipline , the world's first drone delivery service whose focus is delivering life-saving medicine to the most difficult to reach places on earth. Prior to Zipline, Keenan was a co-founder and director of the Personal...

I chatted to Isabella Fiorello from the University of Freiburg about plant-inspired robots made from living materials. Isabella Fiorello is a Junior Group Leader and Principal Investigator of the Bioinspired Plant-hybrid Materials group at the University of Freiburg in Germany. She has a Master's Degree in Industrial Biotechnology from the University of Turin in Italy and a PhD in Biorobotics from...

Claire chatted to Christos Bergeles from King's College London about micro-surgical robots to deliver therapies deep inside the body. Christos Bergeles received his PhD in Robotics from ETH Zurich in Switzerland in 2011. As a Professor at King's College London, he directs the "Robotics and Vision in Medicine Lab" whose mission is to develop micro-surgical robots that deliver regenerative therapies...

Claire chatted to Mini Rai from Orbit Rise about orbital and planetary robots. Mini Rai is the founding Director of Orbit Rise Ltd and an honorary Professor at the University of Lincoln. Previously, she was the Global Chair in Robotic Engineering at the University of Lincoln and an Associate Professor at the Surrey Space Centre. Mini has over 27 years of research and innovation experience in Space...

Claire chatted to Joe Wolfel from Terradepth about autonomous submersible robots for collecting ocean data. Joe Wolfel is the CEO and founder of Terradepth. He is passionate about helping people make better and faster decisions regarding what we do (and don't do) in the ocean. Terradepth designs and builds ocean-going robots at scale, deploys them, and delivers data through an ocean data platform...

Claire chatted to Gabriella Pizzuto from the University of Liverpool about intelligent robotic manipulators for laboratory automation. Gabriella Pizzuto is a Lecturer in Robotics and Chemistry Automation at the University of Liverpool. She is also a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow and ECR Co-Chair on the EPSRC AI Hub in Chemistry. She has a Ph. D. in Computer Science from the Universi...

Claire chatted to Pratap Tokekar from the University of Maryland about how teams of robots with different capabilities can work together. Pratap Tokekar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland, and an Amazon Scholar. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the GRASP lab of University of Pe...

Claire chatted to Maria Elena Giannaccini from the University of Aberdeen about soft and bioinspired robotics for healthcare and beyond. Maria Elena Giannaccini has a degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Università di Pisa in Italy. She conducted her Master's thesis at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna as part of the EU-funded OCTOPUS project. In 2015, she obtained her PhD in Robotics at the Bristol...

Claire chatted to Jonathan Walker from Innovate UK about translating robotics research into the commercial sector. Jonathan Walker is the Innovation Lead for Robotics and Sensors at Innovate UK . He is working with government, universities, businesses and cross-sector teams to accelerate the development and uptake of robotics in the UK. Areas of particular interest are the built environment, circu...

Claire chatted to Esyin Chew from Cardiff Metropolitan University about service and social humanoid robots in healthcare and education. Esyin Chew is the Director of the EUREKA Robotics Centre , one of 11 specialist robotics centres in the UK, impacting underprivileged communities with over 120 humanoid robots. She has led million-pound government or industrial-funded global projects across the UK...

Claire chatted to Matt Beane from the University of California, Santa Barbara about how humans can learn to work with intelligent machines. Matt Beane conducts field research on robots and AI in the workplace, focusing on positive exceptions applicable to the broader world of work. He has published his award-winning research in top management journals and presented on the TED stage. He's been reco...

Claire chatted to Gisela Reyes-Cruz from the University of Nottingham about how humans interact with, trust and accept robots. Gisela Reyes-Cruz investigates human-computer and human-robot interaction to understand everyday life interactions with technologies, as well as trust in them and public acceptance. These technologies include autonomous and robotic systems: from mobile apps that have, or m...

Claire chatted to John Leonard from Massachusetts Institute of Technology about autonomous navigation for underwater vehicles and self-driving cars.  John Leonard is a Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His research addresses the problems of navigation...

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Robotics is helping to rehabilitate and increase human abilities in areas like mobility and stamina. Innovations in robotic devices, exoskeletons, and wearable tech aim to offer disabled people different perspectives and new experiences, as well as supporting humans more widely to access, inhabit and work safely in dangerous and extreme conditions. What does the future hold for these technologies...

Claire chatted to Simone Schuerle from ETH Zürich all about microrobots, medicine and science. Simone Schuerle is Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, where she heads the Responsive Biomedical System Lab. With her team, she develops diagnostic and therapeutic systems at the nano- and microscale with the aim of tackling a range of challenging problems in medicine. One major focus of he...

Claire chatted to Lord Ara Darzi from Imperial College London all about robotic surgery - past, present and future. Ara Darzi is Co-Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London and holds the Paul Hamlyn Chair of Surgery. In 2002, he was knighted for his services to medicine and surgery and in 2007 was introduced as Lord Darzi of Denham to the UK's House of Lords...

Claire chatted to Isabelle Ormerod from the University of Bristol all about human-centred design and women in robotics. Isabelle Ormerod is a PhD student at Bristol Robotics Lab in the Design and Manufacturing Futures Lab. Her professional path began in the medical product design industry, where she observed firsthand the application of human factors (HF) processes for dextrous and high-risk proce...

Claire chatted to Mario Di Castro from CERN all about robotic inspection and maintenance in hazardous environments. Mario Di Castro has a Master's degree in electronic engineering from the University of Naples Federico II in Italy and a PhD in robotics and industrial controls from the Polytechnic University of Madrid in Spain. Since 2011 he has led the Mechatronics, Robotics and Operation section...

Claire chatted to Margarita Chli from the University of Cyprus all about vision, navigation, and small aerial drones. Margarita Chli is a professor of Robotic Vision and the director of the Vision for Robotics Lab, at the University of Cyprus and ETH Zurich. Her work has contributed to the first vision-based autonomous flight of a small drone and the first demonstration of collaborative monocular...

Claire chatted to Steve Benford from the University of Nottingham all about art, dance, and cat sitting robots. Steve Benford is the Dunford Professor of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham where he co-founded the Mixed Reality Laboratory. His research explores artistic applications of digital technologies through performance-led methods that engage artists in creating, touring and st...

Claire chatted to Estelle Raffy from the University of Bristol all about animal behaviour, intelligence, and life-like artificial systems. Estelle Raffy is a PhD student at the University of Bristol. During her Bachelor's degree in neuroscience and cognitive science, the "brained body" of the octopus kept her wondering: how can nature start with similar basic principles and end up with massive dec...

Claire chatted to Chang Liu from Extend Robotics all about teleoperation, virtual reality, and software. Chang Liu is an entrepreneur from academia and high-tech start-ups. He is the founder, CEO and Chief Designer of Extend Robotics . He was previously a research associate in Imperial College London and University of Southampton on autonomous aerial robot navigation. Join the live audience! Robot...

Claire chatted to Vassia Simaiaki from Wayve all about computer vision, artificial intelligence, and self-driving cars. Vassia Simaiaki is passionate about taking research into application and has spent the last decade of her career in computer vision. She leads AI research in vision and graphics at Wayve . Her focus is pushing the boundaries of novel view synthesis and continuing to accelerate th...

Claire chatted to Danesh Tarapore from the University of Southampton all about fault detection, division of labour, and robot swarms. Danesh Tarapore is an Associate Professor at the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. Danesh has addressed a diverse range of challenges in fault detection and recovery in robot swarms. He is also keen to push robot swarms out...