Claire chatted to Heather Knight from Oregon State University about applying methods from the performing arts to robotics.

Heather Knight runs the CHARISMA Robotics research group. Her education includes a PhD on Expressive Motion for Low Degree of Freedom Robots from Carnegie Mellon University, and M.S. and B.S. degrees in EECS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Aldebaran Robotics, and produced the Robot Film Festival, a Cyberflora robot flower garden, robot comedy on TED.com, and a two-floor Rube Goldberg machine for OK Go that won a British Video Music Award.

This episode is sponsored by Soft Robotics for Healthcare, a national platform for accelerating the clinical adoption of soft robotic technologies. Their upcoming event: SoRoH 2026 'Shaping the Future of Soft Robotics in Health' is coming to Bristol on the 19th and 20th of January. Register at softroboticshealth.org.uk