#241 – Boris Sofman: Waymo, Cozmo, Self-Driving Cars, and the Future of Robotics

Boris Sofman is the Senior Director Of Engineering and Head of Trucking at Waymo, formerly the Google Self-Driving Car project. He was also the CEO and co-founder of Anki, a home robotics company. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:

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EPISODE LINKS:

Boris's Twitter: https://twitter.com/bsofman

Boris's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bsofman

Waymo's Twitter: https://twitter.com/waymo

Waymo's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/waymo

Waymo's Website: https://waymo.com/

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OUTLINE:

Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

(00:00) - Introduction

(07:32) - Robots in science fiction

(13:13) - Cozmo

(38:28) - AI companions

(45:23) - Anki

(1:10:56) - Waymo Via

(1:42:34) - Sensor suites for long haul trucking

(1:52:30) - Machine learning

(2:10:26) - Waymo vs Tesla

(2:21:02) - Safety and risk management

(2:30:06) - Societal effects of automation

(2:41:11) - Amazon Astro

(2:45:35) - Challenges of the robotics industry

(2:50:03) - Humanoid robotics

(2:57:06) - Advice for getting a PhD in robotics

(3:04:37) - Advice for robotics startups

(3:15:43) - Advice for students