The Robot Report Podcast

On the show this week we review the robotics industry news, including a story about the Ocado acquisition of 6 River Systems and the fire sale price that Ocado paid for the assets of 6 River Systems from Shopify earlier this year. The featured interview is a conversation with Aerobotix VP of Sales, Chris Kolb. Aerobotix builds and integrates robotic inspection, sanding, and painting systems for US military aircraft maintenance. The systems installed by Aerobotix even painted the US Air Force aircraft filmed for the original Top Gun Maverick movie.

Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics, talks about innovation at Boston Dynamics, moving to the AI Institute, legged robotics, applications of humanoid robotics, robot testing standards, repositioning of a robotics company, maneuvering and sensing in robotics, and the future impact of robots on labor.

On the show this week, we talk to Marc Segura, President of the ABB Robotics Division. Marc is an industry veteran with 25+ years at ABB. On the show, he gives us his perspective on the current state of the robotics market, the roadmap for ABB products and the future of mobile robots. Marc introduces us to the new lineup of ABB industrial robots with changeable link sizes, enabling 22 variants of four base models.

In this episode, we recap the recent LogiMat tradeshow in Europe with Waku Robotics founder and CEO Victor SplittGerber. Victor also brings us up to speed on the European AMR market and the evolution of the Lotsofbots online mobile robot database that Waku Robotics developed and maintains.

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.