Robohub Podcast

In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Bill Reith an engineer at Backyard Brains. The company develops RoboRoach, the world's first commercially available "cyborg" which was successfully backed on KickStarter. Using their kit, you can briefly control the left/right movement of a cockroach from a smart phone using microstimulation of the antenna nerves. The RoboRoach is one of the many tools that Backyard Brains hopes to use to teach students about neuroscience. Aware of the ethical questions their work raises, the company has put out a set of ethical statements. To explore the ethical side further, AJung Moon speaks with Prof. Oliver Bendel at the School of Business in Basel.

In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Professor Peter Corke from Queensland University of Technology, about the fast-tracking research that will see robots planting, weeding, maintaining and harvesting crops. The AgBot is a light-weight, golf buggy-sized robot that has been specifically designed to reduce the environmental impact of weeding.

In this episode, Ron Vanderkley speaks with Professor Peter Corke from Queensland University of Technology, about the fast-tracking research that will see robots planting, weeding, maintaining and harvesting crops.

Link to audio file (27:49)In this episode Per Sjoborg speaks with Henrik Schunk about his company’s work in gripping technology, modular robotics and dexterous manipulation. They then look at service robotics, which was the subject of this year&#...

In this episode Per Sjoborg speaks with Henrik Schunk about his company’s work in gripping technology, modular robotics and dexterous manipulation. They then look at service robotics, which was the subject of this year’s SCHUNK Expert Days in Hausen, Germany. Henrik A. Schunk After his studies at the Technical Universities in Kaiserslautern and Dresden, Henrik […]

Link to audio file (28:48)In this episode, we talk to Justin Werfel from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University about their latest paper published in Science on “Designing Collective Behavior in a Termite-...

In this episode, we talk to Justin Werfel from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University about their latest paper published in Science on "Designing Collective Behavior in a Termite-Inspired Robot Construction Team". This work was done with Kirstin Petersen and Radhika Nagpal, director of the Self-Organizing Systems Research Group.

Link to audio file (41:00)The European Robotics Week 2013 featured 334 robotics related events in 24 countries and attracted more than 55’000 participants spanning all ages. To give us a snapshot of the event, we talk to three organizers of robot...

The European Robotics Week 2013 featured 334 robotics related events in 24 countries and attracted more than 55'000 participants spanning all ages. To give us a snapshot of the event, we talk to three organizers of robotics activities including Fiorella Operto in Italy, Roko Tschakarow in Germany, and Douwe Dresscher in the Netherlands.

Link to audio file (33:53)What does it mean to have giants like Google, Apple and Amazon investing in robotics? Since last December, Google alone has acquired a handful of companies in robotics, home automation and artificial intelligence. This can be ...