In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Dan Mantz, who is the CEO of the Robotics Education and Competition (REC) Foundation. The REC Foundation is a nonprofit that works with VEX Robotics to build int...

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Dan O'Mara, who is the founder and COO of Circuit Launch and Mechlabs. Circuit Launch is a space for hardware entrepreneurs to work in Oakland, California, and Mechlabs is a project-based course to learn robotics. This interview is mostly about Mechlabs, but talks about the origins of Circuit Launch, including how it is not a maker or coworking space and its business model. For Mechlabs, we talk about several of its aspects that make it different than a university education in robotics, including how there are mentors not instructors, how projects are scoped, and how people are invited to work on what is most interesting to them. We also talk about the future of Mechlabs and how it fits with current universities.

The upcoming ICRA 2022 conference will be the first robotics conference that many attend in-person for the first time since the pandemic. For many, it may be your first time ever attending an academic conference. Before it passes by you in a blink, we have a series of posts -- a "millennial's guide" if you will -- to help you make the most out of it.

Robots are becoming a more and more important part of our home and work lives and as we come to rely on them, trust is of paramount importance. Successful teams are founded on trust, and the same is true for human-robot teams. But what does it mean to trust a robot?

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Helen Greiner, CEO at Tertill, which makes a small solar powered weeding robot for vegetable gardens. The conversation begins with an overview of Helen's previous robotics experience, including at as a student at MIT, Co-founder at iRobot, Founder and CEO at CyPhyWorks, and in advising government research in robotics, AI, and machine learning. From there, Helen explains the design of the Tertill robot, how it works, and her high hopes for this simple robot: to help reduce the environmental impact of the agriculture industry by helping people to grow their own food. In the last part of the conversation, Helen speaks broadly about her experience in robotics startups, the robotics industry, and the future of robotics.

In our paper '10 Years of Human-NAO Interaction Research: A Scoping Review', we present an overview of the evolution of NAO's technical capabilities. We also present the main results from a scoping review of the human-robot interaction research literature in which NAO was used.

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Charles Brian Quinn (aka, CBQ), CEO and a Co-Founder of Greenzie. Greenzie make an autonomous driving system for commercial lawn mowers.

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Charles Brian Quinn (aka, CBQ), CEO and a Co-Founder of Greenzie. Greenzie make an autonomous driving system for commercial lawn mowers. We talk about Greenzie's autonomous mowing system, how Greenzie has worked with manufacturers to up-fit their system into commercial mowers, how Greenzie does dog-fooding, safety and standards, and about CBQ's experiences bootstrapping and with venture capital.

Robosoft AI develops and maintains SMACC and SMACC2, which are event-driven, behavior state machine libra...

The use of industrial robots in factories around the world is accelerating at a high rate: 126 robots per 10,000 employees is the new average of global robot density in the manufacturing industries, according to the 2021 World Robot Report.