August 28, 2022

Jim Lawton, worldwide authority on industrial robots, discusses how humans and machines are partnering to improve safety and efficiency in manufacturing

41 minutes

Jim Lawton, VP and GM of Robotics Automation at Zebra Technologies, met the founder of Roomba, Rodney Brooks, at MIT nearly three decades ago. It inspired a lifetime passion for robots that help humans. Since then, he has influenced generations of robotic automation technology at companies from Rethink Robotics to Zebra Technologies. This is a fascinating discussion that will make you reconsider what robots can do and why humans shouldn't feel threatened by them.

Listen and learn...

How Jim cultivated a passion for robots... and why that makes him "the cool dad"
How innovation in robotic technology is helping AMRs, autonomous mobile robots, perform more human-like tasks with less training
Which "dirty, dull, dangerous" tasks are the best candidates for robotic automation
How new training techniques are reducing the time required to train a robot from 300 hours to a fraction of that which "democratizes automation"
What's required to keep humans safe from robots
How supplementing humans with robots for a task like picking items from warehouse shelves using machine vision saves 12-15 miles of walking per day while increasing accuracy
How techniques like SLAM and machine learning are making it easier to program robots to do more complex tasks more accurately with zero or minimal coding
Which new careers will be created by industrial robots... and which will be eliminated
Two quick ways to know if a factory using robots and humans is safe
Why Jim's passion is using robots to help people be their best selves

References in this episode:

The Zebra blog
Tiernan Ray discusses bot sentience on AI and the Future of Work
Is Google's LaMDA sentient?
Machines will out-perform humans in all tasks within 45 years... which is a good thing for us

...more

View all episodes

By Dan Turchin

4.9

2929 ratings

August 28, 2022

Jim Lawton, worldwide authority on industrial robots, discusses how humans and machines are partnering to improve safety and efficiency in manufacturing

41 minutes

How Jim cultivated a passion for robots... and why that makes him "the cool dad"
How innovation in robotic technology is helping AMRs, autonomous mobile robots, perform more human-like tasks with less training
Which "dirty, dull, dangerous" tasks are the best candidates for robotic automation
How new training techniques are reducing the time required to train a robot from 300 hours to a fraction of that which "democratizes automation"
What's required to keep humans safe from robots
How supplementing humans with robots for a task like picking items from warehouse shelves using machine vision saves 12-15 miles of walking per day while increasing accuracy
How techniques like SLAM and machine learning are making it easier to program robots to do more complex tasks more accurately with zero or minimal coding
Which new careers will be created by industrial robots... and which will be eliminated
Two quick ways to know if a factory using robots and humans is safe
Why Jim's passion is using robots to help people be their best selves

References in this episode:

The Zebra blog
Tiernan Ray discusses bot sentience on AI and the Future of Work
Is Google's LaMDA sentient?
Machines will out-perform humans in all tasks within 45 years... which is a good thing for us

...more