In this episode of the Safety Third Podcast, Erik Reynolds speaks with Dr. Werner Krauss, head of the research division for automation and robotics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA), where he has spent 15 years bridging academic research and real-world industrial deployment.

They cover the real engineering challenges behind deploying humanoid robots in industrial settings, drawing on Fraunhofer IPA's hands-on evaluation of the UNITREE G1 across safety, cybersecurity, clean room performance, and what those findings mean for trusting these platforms in the real world. Werner also shares what surprised his team most about these platforms, why end users are harder to design for than the robots themselves, and the incident from his own career that changed how Fraunhofer trains everyone who operates a robot.

Read the Fraunhofer IPA's 3-part series on humanoid robots in industry.

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