Robohub Podcast

Cecilia Lashi, co-coordinator of the Octopus European project, talks about a soft bio-mimetic robotic octopus arm; Hobbyist Carl Morgan, presents his sleek silver humanoid that rides behind your tandem bike and does all the pedaling; and Carson Reynolds, professor at the University of Tokyo, tells us about his high-speed robotic hand.

Cory Kidd is the founder of Intuitive Automata Inc. which commercializes a robotic weight-loss coach born during his PhD at the MIT Media Lab. He tells us about how good human-robot interaction can keep people motivated to eat well and exercise. We'll also be holding a Christmas contest for a chance to win two robot kits for beginners.

Julie Townsend from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California talks about her work with NASA's Mars rovers and the lunar ATHLETE robot. Sebastian Gautsch from the the SAMLAB in Neuchatel, Switzerland, tells us about the Atomic Force Microscope that was sent to Mars aboard the Phoenix lander in the Spring of 2008.

Andrea Thomaz from Georgia Tech looks at how humans can teach and humanoids learn with the hope to create good human-robot interactions. We then speak with Sethu Vijayakumar from the University of Edinburgh about machine learning and how it can be used to teach a robot hand to balance a pole.

Ludovic Dovat from the Singapore National University tells us about stroke victims' trouble re-learning to use their hands, and the robotic systems he designed to help with the rehabilitation process. David Brown tells us about the effects of stroke and his company Kinea Design that produces robots that help people learn to walk in unstructured terrain.

Howie Choset from Carnegie Mellon University explains the basics of snake robots, and how he hopes to see them used anywhere from disaster areas to industrial inspection or even surgery. Erik Kyrkjebø from SINTEF Applied Cybernetics in Norway speaks about their own pipe inspection robots as well as a snake robot designed for fighting fires.

Tony Prescott from the University of Sheffield speaks about active perception in rats, and presents his SCRATCHbot robot that features artificial whiskers. Elio Tuci from the Italian National Research Council speaks of a robot arm that can distinguish between different objects using active perception.

Sara Mitri, researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne speaks about her bio-inspired experiments on the evolution of communication. Jürgen Jost, director at Leipzig's Max Planck Institute, discusses intentionality in robot communication.

Dean Kaman from DEKA research speaks about the spirit of invention that drives him to create products that improve lives, and of the FIRST initiative that encourages young children to get engaged in engineering and science.

Rainer Konietschke at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of the German Aerospace Centre explains the MiroSurge project for robotic endoscopic surgery. Woung Youn Chung at the Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, Korea explains using the Da Vinci surgical robot to treat thyroid cancer.