The Robot Report Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

This week we connected with Bren Pierce, CEO and founder of a young startup that recently decloaked to bring a new wheeled humanoid robot platform to market. Pierce was a co-founder and chief robotics officer at Bear Robotics, and his latest venture is looking at the applications of a wheeled humanoid solution. Pierce is considering deploying this new robot into warehousing and service robotics applications. Imagine a robot that can serve food and bus the tables in a restaurant. Pierce fully understands how to build robotics for this market, and believes that a wheeled robot with two arms is the right solution. Learn more at:https://www.kinisi.tech/ In this episode cohosts Mike Oitzman and Gene Demaitre also review the top robotics news stories of the week. Please like and subscribe to ensure that you don't miss an episode.

In this episode, we learn all about Yarbo robotics from cofounder Kenneth Kohlmann. Yarbo made its mark with the launch of its first robotic snow blower in 2018, and has now extended the product line with additional attachments including a mower deck and leaf blower. The company has plans to extend the utility of the robotic base with more attachments in the future. Learn more at: https://www.yarbo.com/us

On today's episode, we catch up with Oana Jinga, co-founder, Chief Commercial and Product Officer for Dexory to learn all about the Dexory warehouse inventory management solution. Also on this episode, we feature a conversation between editorial director Gene Demaitre and Garret Place, Business Development for robotic perception at ifm.

For the last episode of 2021, the editorial staff of Steve Crowe, Mike Oitzman and Dan Kara review and discuss the top robotics stories of 2021. Thank you to all of our faithful audience for a great year. If you have feedback or input, leave us a voicemail at therobotreport.com/voicemail

Welcome to Episode 64 of The Robot Report Podcast, which brings conversations with robotics innovators straight to you. Join us each week for discussions with leading roboticists, innovative robotics companies, and other key members of the robotics community. In today's episode, Steve and Mike interview Fady Saad from Massrobotics and Eric Anderson from AWS Robotics about how Massrobotics and AWS are enabling young robotics startups to accelerate their growth and development. We learn about the new startup incubator program starting in 2022 and how your company can participate. Also on the show, we hear from Savioke CEO Steve Cousins about how a new feature in the Savioke Relay+ is delighting customers and setting the standard for social robotics interactions in the field.

Welcome to Episode 63  of The Robot Report Podcast, which brings conversations with robotics innovators straight to you. Join us each week for discussions with leading roboticists, innovative robotics companies, and other key members of the robotics community. In today's episode, Steve and Mike interview robotics innovator Esben Østergaard, CEO of Reinvest Robotics and cofounder of Universal Robots. We discuss the potential impact of the pending EU AI Act and Machinery Directive. These directives are likely to impact the growth of AI startup in the EU and burden them with rules that will hamper innovation. Esben offers his thoughts about innovation and how successful robotics startups need a competitive playing field to be successful. Could this be the death of robotic and AI innovation in the EU? Listen in to learn more. Here's a link to Esben's recent blog about the impact of the EU AI Act and Machinery Directive. “The approach of the current machinery directive is sufficient. The problem is with governance. We recommend focusing on ensuring that products on the market actually comply with the current EU law, not creating new regulations,” said Østergaard. Steve and Mike also review the latest robotics news stories from the last week, including the following stories reported on The Robot Report: - Robotics Summit & Expo 2022 call for speakers - MiR is building autonomous pallet jacks - Knightscope IPO taking security robots public - Serve Robotics closes $13 million funding round - Nuro, Waymo bring autonomous deliveries to California

Samir Menon, founder and CEO of Dexterity Inc. joins the program this week. We discuss Dexterity's rapid growth and its approach to developing full-stack robotic picking for logistics, supply chain, and warehousing applications. Mike and Steve also discuss some recent trending stories, including China's role is ending a potential autonomous vehicle SPAC. https://www.therobotreport.com/spac-merger-plus-autonomous-trucks-called-off/ https://www.therobotreport.com/gatik-autonomous-box-trucks-milestone-walmart/ https://www.therobotreport.com/autonomous-racing-goes-head-to-head-at-the-autonomous-challenge-ces-in-las-vegas/

Today’s episode recaps a major week for autonomous vehicles. Cruise co-founder, CTO and president Kyle Vogt hailed the first driverless robotaxi ride in SF, Waymo started to map New York City and Nuro raised another $600M for its autonomous delivery vehicles. And we don’t even mention Aurora debuting on the Nasdaq, FedEx testing autonomous delivery in China, and Autobrains raising $101 million for its unsupervised AI for autonomous vehicles. You'll also hear from James DeSmet, president and CEO of CRG Automation. The company built a robotic system to help decommission a stockpile of 70,000 chemical missiles at a base in Kentucky. James walks us through the challenges of the project. Our favorite quote from the interview: “We’re just packaging a very dangerous chemical weapon instead of a Twinkie. It’s a little different, but it’s the same.” You can check out videos of the system in action over at CRG Automation’s YouTube channel.

In today's episode, Steve and Mike interview Alex Wischnewski, team lead for Technical University of Munich [TUM], and the winning race team at the 2021 Indy Autonomous Challenge. Alex discusses how the team came together for the competition and the stress of race day when they had to make changes to the race parameters to balance speed with safe operations. The Indy Autonomous Challenge turned out to be more difficult than anyone anticipated, and Alex provides a first hand view of pushing autonomous vehicles to the limit. Steve and Mike also cover the latest robotics news stories from the last week.

Mike caught up with Melonee Wise, founder of Fetch Robotics and VP of robotics automation at Zebra Technologies, at the AMRs and Logistics Conference. They discussed the new Fetch FlexShelf, FlexShelf Guide, RollerTop Guide autonomous mobile robot solutions that came out this week, as well as the state of logistics automation. We also discuss the news of the week, including Softbank reportedly negotiating the sale of its French robotics business, Softbank Robotics Europe, to German distributor United Robotics Group. We also discuss the new AMR solutions from Fetch Robotics, the historic IPO of AutoStore on the Oslo Stock Exchange and a couple of food-related automation items. Show Notes https://www.therobotreport.com/report-softbank-negotiating-sale-of-french-robotics-business/ https://www.therobotreport.com/fetch-robotics-adds-3-amrs-person-to-goods-workflows/ https://www.therobotreport.com/autostore-stock-surges-debut-oslo-stock-exchange/ https://www.therobotreport.com/spyce-closes-original-robotic-restaurant-in-boston/