The Robot Report Podcast

This week, co-hosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman talk to industry veteran Ted Larson, the co-founder and CEO of OLogic. Ted, and OLogic have helped many robotic entrepreneurs through the design & development process of complex systems. Ted shares some of his favorite stories and valuable tips related to the complexities of developing successful robotic solutions.

This week cohosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman explore the various robotic and automation solutions that were on display at the 2023 World Ag Expo in Tulare, CA. The episode features interviews with representatives from Monarch Tractor, Agtonomy, Carbon Robotics and Farmwise. Mike also discusses new solutions from Tevel Aerobotics, Farm-NG, Amos Power, Nexus Robotics, Bluewhite, Beewise, and Guard...

Cohosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman review the news of the week, including a wayward Marty robot "out for a fresh air break". Joining us on the show this week is Aaron Prather, who is one of the robotics industries best known influencers. Aaron is a frequent speaker and discusses his new role at ASTM and reflects on his prior experience evaluating new robotics and automation for logistics and war...

This week, co-hosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman review the latest Boston Dynamics Atlas video and how Atlas is getting more agile through simulation. Mike Oitzman reviews his recent trip to CES 2023, and features interviews with Aeolus Robotics Head of Product, Dan Haddick. Next we talk to Robosen Chief Marketing Officer Tony Crisp about the capabilities of Optimus Prime toy robot, and what's nex...

Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman recap the top moments and biggest stories that happened in the robotics industry during 2022. Thanks again to all our listeners and guests for another great year!

This week we discuss the issue of police officers using robots with lethal force in emergency situations. After an initial 8-3 vote approving such a measure, San Francisco's board of supervisors reversed course this week and temporarily banned its police officers from using robots with lethal force. To break this all down, we're joined by Paul Scharre, Vice President and Director of Studies at the...

To celebrate our 100th episode, we look back at our favorite guests and moments. We also look ahead at what's next for the show. Nic Radford, founder and CEO of Nauticus Robotics, joins the show to discuss his team's development of underwater robots. Leveraging experience developing space robots for NASA, Nauticus' underwater robots can perform inspection and maintenance tasks and much more.

In this episode, cohosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman talk to the co-founders of the Robotics Operations Group, affectionately known as "ROG" about the recent inaugural RobOpsCon. The mission of ROG is to develop and share best practices for the operation at scale of autonomous robots. Guests Florian Pestoni and Joe Wieciek talk to Mike about the growth of the group and the planning for the recent...

Samantha Johnson, founder and CEO of Boston-based startup Tatum Robotics, describes the company's anthropomorphic robotic system designed to sign tactile sign languages for people with deafblindness - they can't hear or see. Johnson dives into the challenging system design and the opportunities for such technology. Samantha also discusses her passion for helping the deafblind community, educating...

In this episode, we discuss the news of the shutdown of Argo AI and the state of autonomous driving, including the upcoming IAC race event. Mike interviews Covariant. AI CEO, Peter Chen, and they discuss the new CovariantOne RaaS solution, that's based on performance SLAs for the Covariant warehouse solution.

In this episode, we talk to Eliot Horowitz, founder and CEO of Viam Inc. Viam launched the open beta of its new robotics platform. Viam provides an open-source robot architecture that turns complex functionality into simple APIs, with an integrated cloud service to orchestrate production deployments. Co-hosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman also discuss news of the week, includes the end of delivery...

This week, cohosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman discuss the recent unveiling of the Tesla Optimus bipedal robot at the Tesla AI Days 2022 event. We also learn about the latest in warehouse and logistics automation in an interview with Swisslog USA President, Markus Schmidt.

This week, we talk with RoboTire CEO Victor Darolfi about automating tire-changing in auto shops. Victor explains the challenges of combining vision and robots to automate dirty, back-breaking work.

Co-hosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman are joined by Dan Kara to preview and discuss the upcoming RoboBusiness and Field Robotics Engineering Forum. The events take place October 19-20, 2022 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. To register, go to robobusiness.com

Cohosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman discuss the latest news about commercial UAVs, the recent FTC investigation of Amazon's pending acquisition of iRobot and Mike interviews Kishore Boyalakuntla, VP of products at automation provider Berkshire Grey

Michael Kohen, founder and CEO of Spark AI, joins the show. Michael discusses situations in which AI and machine learning still come up short for robotics systems and how his company's human-in-the-loop system helps solve edge cases in real-time. He shares specific real-world examples, including details about Spark AI's partnership with John Deere and its autonomous tractors. The podcast also disc...

Jessica Yip, co-founder and chief operating officer of Canadian startup A&K Robotics joins the podcast. She discusses A&K's autonomous, electric pods that are being tested at airports to move passengers with mobility issues around concourses. The podcast also recaps the stories of the week, including Chili's pausing a robotics pilot, Locus scoring a major win with GEODIS and more.

This week we get an update on the technology embedded within the Indy Autonomous Challenge racecars in a conversation with Joe Speed, plus we learn how Skyline Robotics is deploying robots to clean skyscraper windows in New York City.

Peter Finn, managing director of Cowen’s Industrials investment banking group, joins the podcast to discuss the state of investment into the robotics industry. Peter discusses how inflation, higher interest rates, and other world issues have impacted how investors are approaching robotics companies. He also shares the trends he's seeing, markets he's excited about, investment advice and thoughts a...

This week our guest is Sally Miller, Chief Information Officer for DHL Supply Chain North America. Sally discusses the deployment of robotics at DHL North America, and how DHL likes to work with vendors to innovate and optimize their logistic workflows. This episode is sponsored by Weintek USA, maker of HMIs. For more information check out: http://www.weintekusa.com or call +1.425.488.1100

Nima Fazeli, assistant professor of robotics at the University of Michigan and director of the Manipulation and Machine Intelligence Lab, joins the program to discuss the flaws of the chess-playing robot that broke a 7-year-old's finger during a tournament in Russia. Fazeli helped develop a Jenga-playing robot while at MIT. Mike and Steve also hit on the top stories of the week, including research...

Mike Dooley, co-founder and CEO of robotics startup Labrador Systems, joins the podcast. We discuss how Labrador built autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for home environments to help the elderly and those with mobility issues. Mike also discusses how his days at Evolution Robotics and iRobot helped shape some of the decisions being made at Labrador Systems. Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman also dive int...

Our guest this week is Brian Gerkey, CEO and co-founder of Open Robotics and one of creators of ROS. Brian tells us about the development and evolution of the Robot Operating System (ROS) and why open source software has played such a pivotal role in the growth of the robotics industry and in the acceleration of robotics research in university and corporate robotic labs around the world.

This week, hosts Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman discuss the recent ban of autonomous tractors in California and what this means for the AGTECH industry to be able to test new solutions in California. Featured interview this week is Anders Beck, VP of Innovation and Strategy at Universal Robots. Anders introduces us to the new UR20 robot that was launched at Automatica 2022 this week. Special music t...

Niels Jul Jacobsen, CEO of Danish startup Capra Robotics, joins the show to discuss the company's innovative mobile robotics platform. He also shares lessons learned from scaling and selling Mobile Industrial Robots, an AMR developer he founded in 2013. Capra Robotics Website - https://capra.ooo/ https://www.therobotreport.com/watch-disneylands-spider-man-robot-crash-into-building/ https://www.the...