Let's Talk Robotics

Joining me today (eps 120) is Tom Loefler! Tom is an inventor, industrial designer and tech innovator on a mission to use robots to improve ocean health. As cofounder and chief executive of Hullbot, he focuses on product vision and company leadership. Hullbot develops underwater drone platforms that can inspect, map and interact with submerged structures.

Prior to founding Hullbot Tom had a career as an industrial designer bringing new products from idea to reality. Tom gained experience in developing product concepts and prototypes across various industries including transportation, medical devices, scientific equipment, architecture and consumer products. He has also worked as a freelancer and contractor in TV & film, creative fabrication, architecture and the construction industry. Before this Tom worked in boat manufacturing and fitout. He studied naval architecture & mechanical engineering before ultimately graduating with first class honours in Industrial Design. More recently Tom has worked as an industrial design educator and mentor.

Tom has a passion for the ocean and wild places, and grew up surfing and sailing in Sydney. He has a passion for wildlife, the beach, the mountains, camping, 4WDing and woodworking.

Joining me today is Saba Samiei. Saba is the founder and CEO of MACSO Technologies and Comfort.AI, companies that seek to realise the potential of AI and spread information about AI ethics. Starting at a young age, Samiei has always focused on making artificial intelligence not only accessible but also a part of everyday life. Saba is also the WAI APAC 2023 winner of the Innovation Category as well as the Agribusiness Award.

With MACSO, the goal is to create an AI capable of replicating human senses. Presently, the MACSO AI has been used to create sensors for the early detection of respiratory illnesses in livestock. There are multiple projects in the pipeline, with an overarching idea of early detection allowing for preventative measures. Comfort.AI delivers workshops to non-technical audiences to improve their confidence to introduce AI into the business.

Joining me today is Ellie Holmes. Ellie completed her honours degree in biomedical engineering at RMIT in the latter months of 2022, from then onwards they have worked with MEMKO. Ellie is employed as a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Solutions Engineer, where work is focused on data customisation, migration and upgrades of Dassault Systèmes leading PLM software brands. Ellie is also involved in event planning and content creation from a technical perspective.

Evident, in Ellie is a deep passion for a better tomorrow. Previously, they have worked with Mat Bowtell at Free 3D Hands in Phillip Island; a non-for-profit that designs, creates and distributes assistive devices for children and adults all over the world, for free. Ellie’s passion for assistive technology flourished following her time with Free 3D Hands, prompting the design and fabrication of a gait correction device for stroke patient’s exhibiting hemiplegic effects, as her final year university project.

Today, Ellie exhibits established technical expertise over an array of software's (Catia, Enovia, Simulia, 3DExperience, Blender, Solidworks, nTop, Adobe Illustrator, the Microsoft suite). She is also well versed in the coding languages C++, Java & MQL, with a new-found love for object-oriented programming.

Joining me today (eps 117) is Per Stigsson. Per qualified as an Electronics technician and started working with testing robotic at ASEA in Sweden in 1981. He then moved to ASEA Robotics training Centre in Sweden in 1984. He came to Australia in 1988 to work at ABB Robotics Department in Melbourne. His main focus was to build up a robotics training facility in Melbourne.

He left ABB in 2011 to take some time off, and do a bit of travel. When he returned, he started Robot Spares in 2012. He was joined by his son Mik in 2017 and his right hand woman Gail in 2020.

Joining me today is Dr Fatma Al-widyan. She is a passionate educator and is currently the director of UTS Student Teams (FSAE Electric Car, FSAE Autonomous Car, The Rover Project, and The Rocketry Project).

Fatma says being an educator is better than any dessert she has ever had. She has always wanted a job that excited her to get up in the morning for. It has been extremely rewarding for Fatma and she feels truly blessed to work with students as it is her passion. She believes a great educator will be of the most influential people in the student’s academic and social development, and she does her best to give them the guidance, encouragement, compassion, and strength to eventually create engineers who bring their knowledge into reality and pass on the love of learning.

As the director of Faculty Teams, she believes it is not as much about the project you involve yourself in as it is about inspiring each other as young engineers to be creative, competent, productive, well-respected, and highly skilled leaders that can work successfully in any discipline. Also, providing the engineering profession with another generation of superstars who drive innovation for our nation.

There is plenty of training and experience around working in a team, leadership, and problem-solving, but also communication, presentation skills, and engagement with industry throughout their education that had powerful effects on our students' learning outcomes.

Her Ph.D. research proposed a novel effort-based theoretical framework for pedestrian route choice problems to discover principles that pedestrians use to select their routes. Pedestrian chooses their route by optimising certain criteria such as distance, time, and effort. Several possible criteria that could be used to predict the route choices of a pedestrian are re-assessed. In most cases, the common criteria of a pedestrian route choice are route length and travel time. The effort is proposed as an additional criterion, which indicates metabolic energy.

Joining me today for episode 115 is Bernice Yeow. She is an AI / Machine learning enthusiasts recently graduated from the University of Sydney. She loves applying statistics, technology, and management and applying them to projects and solving problems.

In the past she has been involved in a few research on AI related projects, including using AI for object detection in an image, natural language preprocessing to detect depressive thoughts on Twitter, and created a chatbot that act as an order management system for a logistic firm.

Currently she is extending herself in artificial intelligence and it's subsets, including deep learning and reinforcement learning to build robotic agents.

Joining me today is Assistant Professor Ray LC. RAY explores our own stories about the way we adapt to technologies. His interdisciplinary art-design-science practice creates interactions and narrative environments for building bonds between humans and machines. Taking a PhD from UCLA, and MFA from Parsons School of Design, RAY takes perspective from his previous research in neuroscience (Nature, J. Neurosci, Frontiers in Psych.) into his art-design and HCI practice, with recent work exhibited at New York Hall of Science, Ars Electronica Linz, Saari Residency, New Museum, NeurIPS, Angewandte Festival, Osage Gallery, Videotage, Goethe Institute, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Science Gallery Detroit, IEEE VISAP, SIGGRAPH Asia, Kyoto Design Lab; and published in venues like CHI, CSCW, DIS, HRI. RAY founded the Studio for Narrative Spaces: https://recfro.github.io/

Connect with Ray here:

instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studiofornarrativespaces/

website: https://recfro.github.io/ 

linkedin: linkedin.com/in/raylc/

Joining me today is Jack Hurley. Jack is the CEO of Firetail Robotics, a company focused on developing autonomous robots for air, land, and sea applications. Under his leadership, Firetail Robotics won a grant from the Pacific Humanitarian Challenge 2016, refining their UAS prototype for use in disaster situations. The company has expanded its scope, collaborating with major corporations such as Telstra, Transurban, and Boral on innovative projects in Robotics and AI technologies.

Working with Transurban, Firetail Robotics has contributed to the development of mobile road safety robotics, enhancing transportation safety and efficiency. In collaboration with Boral, the company has been involved in AI vision technologies, optimizing onsite safety processes.

Additionally, Jack leads Surfbee Pty Ltd, an internal venture specializing in innovative unmanned marine and aquatic robotic solutions for the water sector. His strong background in technology innovation has made a significant impact in the world of unmanned robotic systems, not only assisting in disaster relief but also contributing to advancements in transportation safety and water management solutions worldwide.

Joining me today is Rossana Bianchi. Rossana is a Senior Manager in Accenture’s Applied Intelligence practice where she focuses on helping organisations in their data and AI-led innovation journey. As part of her day-to-day Rossana also leads Accenture’s responsible Artificial Intelligence practice which mission is to assist clients in developing solutions powered by data and AI that achieve not only business outcomes but also contribute to creating a more equitable society and fighting climate change.

In her previous roles at KPMG Australia and EY FSO UK she developed and launched new businesses and service offerings (i.e., data ethics; risk management innovation), worked closely with start-ups in South Africa and Jordan as part of EY’s Leadership Development program (Vantage) and contributed to shaping the firms’ D&I strategy and plan to attract and retain a diverse pool of data and AI talent.

Rossana is passionate about accelerating women’s careers in STEM, helping women navigate the opportunities and challenges associated with climate change and collaborating with the broader eco-system (accelerators, start-ups, non-for-profit) on climate tech and tech for good projects.

Rossana is originally Italian (from Rome) and spent the last 12 years living and working abroad across Europe, the U.K., South Africa and Australia and has shifted her professional journey starting as a compliance and internal audit consultant back in Rome to transitioning to the Robotics and AI practice at EY in London to developing and launching the Data ethics practice for KPMG Australia.

In her spare time, she enjoys being active, exploring the world and sharing the joy of parenthood - as the mum of an 8 months old baby – with her husband Daniel.

Joining me today is Brent Balinski, co-founder and editor of @AuManufacturing. Brent finished a journalism degree in 2006 and has had a passion for manufacturing since he began writing about it in 2012.

His work has appeared in titles including Engineers Australia’s create magazine, AMT Magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald and Manufacturers’ Monthly, where he was assistant editor. He has also served as a copywriter and media consultant for a collection of mainly industrial clients over the years.

Brent co-founded @AuManufacturing – a website, newsletter and community – in late-2018, and it has been his focus ever since. 

@AuManufacturing aims to provide an honesty and comprehensiveness in its news coverage and analysis that simply isn’t available anywhere else. Based on website traffic and the size of its online community it is the number one title for Australian manufacturing.

Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers: A new campaign aimed at celebrating innovative companies and examining how they do it

A new campaign by @AuManufacturing – and sponsored by MYOB, SMC Corporation Australia, and Bosch Australia Manufacturing Solutions – aims to recognise, celebrate and improve understanding of the role of innovation among high-performing manufacturing businesses. 

We’ve all heard that “innovation” is at the heart of successful companies, and that it is vital for manufacturers to prosper in Australia, with an open economy, and high labour and other costs.

But what does innovation even mean? What drives it? How is it understood and systematised within companies? And how does it express itself in new products and processes? 

Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers will be accepting nominations for two months. It will unearth manufacturing innovators, answer the above questions and others, and provide lessons that everyone can use in their business.

Many of the nominees will feature in stories on the @AuManufacturing website, newsletter, and social mediachannels, as well as interviews on the @AuManufacturing Conversations podcast. You can learn about the first nominee, The Hygiene Co., here. 

Are you part of a manufacturing company? Are you interested in sharing what makes you innovative? You can nominate at this link. Nominations close May 26.