Robot Talk

Claire chatted to Joe Wolfel from Terradepth about autonomous submersible robots for collecting ocean data.

Joe Wolfel is the CEO and founder of Terradepth. He is passionate about helping people make better and faster decisions regarding what we do (and don't do) in the ocean. Terradepth designs and builds ocean-going robots at scale, deploys them, and delivers data through an ocean data platform tailored for the maritime community. Prior to Terradepth, Joe has helped start a couple other companies, worked as a management consultant, and served as a US Navy SEAL officer with deployments throughout the Middle East and Africa. Joe was educated at the US Naval Academy.

Check out the fascinating documentary about Terradepth's mission to chart the deep ocean. 

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Claire chatted to Gabriella Pizzuto from the University of Liverpool about intelligent robotic manipulators for laboratory automation.

Gabriella Pizzuto is a Lecturer in Robotics and Chemistry Automation at the University of Liverpool. She is also a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow and ECR Co-Chair on the EPSRC AI Hub in Chemistry. She has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Manchester, where she was also a Marie-Sklodowska Curie early stage researcher and a visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh and Italian Institute of Technology. She was then a postdoctoral research associate at the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, prior to joining the University of Liverpool.

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Claire chatted to Pratap Tokekar from the University of Maryland about how teams of robots with different capabilities can work together.

Pratap Tokekar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland, and an Amazon Scholar. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the GRASP lab of University of Pennsylvania and later, an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech. He has a degree in Electronics and Telecommunication from the College of Engineering Pune in India and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. He received the Amazon Research Award in 2022, and the NSF CAREER award in 2020.

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Claire chatted to Maria Elena Giannaccini from the University of Aberdeen about soft and bioinspired robotics for healthcare and beyond.

Maria Elena Giannaccini has a degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Università di Pisa in Italy. She conducted her Master’s thesis at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna as part of the EU-funded OCTOPUS project. In 2015, she obtained her PhD in Robotics at the Bristol Robotics, where she focussed on developing safe, variable stiffness robotic devices. She worked at the University of Bristol on the soft, bioinspired Tactip sensor and a soft robotics artificial larynx. In 2019, Elena was appointed as a Lecturer in Robotics at the University of Aberdeen where she pioneered research in soft robotics.

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Claire chatted to Jonathan Walker from Innovate UK about translating robotics research into the commercial sector.

Jonathan Walker is the Innovation Lead for Robotics and Sensors at Innovate UK. He is working with government, universities, businesses and cross-sector teams to accelerate the development and uptake of robotics in the UK. Areas of particular interest are the built environment, circular economy, and helping people live independently for longer. Jonathan wants to support these themes through cluster development, funded collaborative R&D, skills programs from school outreach, apprenticeships and T-levels to CDTs, business support and leveraging private investment.

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Claire chatted to Esyin Chew from Cardiff Metropolitan University about service and social humanoid robots in healthcare and education.

Esyin Chew is the Director of the EUREKA Robotics Centre, one of 11 specialist robotics centres in the UK, impacting underprivileged communities with over 120 humanoid robots. She has led million-pound government or industrial-funded global projects across the UK, EU, Australia, Malaysia, China and Indonesia, including the British Council award-winning Global PIE programme for Women in STEAM-H. Esyin has impacted numerous underprivileged communities, particularly girls and women in education and healthcare sectors, refugees and Orang Asli (Indigenous people).

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Claire chatted to Matt Beane from the University of California, Santa Barbara about how humans can learn to work with intelligent machines.

Matt Beane conducts field research on robots and AI in the workplace, focusing on positive exceptions applicable to the broader world of work. He has published his award-winning research in top management journals and presented on the TED stage. He's been recognized as a Human-Robot Interaction Pioneer and named to the Thinkers50 Radar list. Matt is an assistant professor in the Technology Management department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and as a Digital Fellow with Stanford's Digital Economy Lab and MIT's Initiative on the Digital Economy.

Check out Matt's TED Talk on 'How do we learn to work with intelligent machines?'.

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Claire chatted to Gisela Reyes-Cruz from the University of Nottingham about how humans interact with, trust and accept robots.

Gisela Reyes-Cruz investigates human-computer and human-robot interaction to understand everyday life interactions with technologies, as well as trust in them and public acceptance. These technologies include autonomous and robotic systems: from mobile apps that have, or may have, a component that works autonomously, to robots that can navigate a physical space on their own, such as telepresence robots. The goal of Gisela's work is to inform responsible system design and design practices.

Find out more about the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/mixedrealitylab/

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Claire chatted to John Leonard from Massachusetts Institute of Technology about autonomous navigation for underwater vehicles and self-driving cars. 

John Leonard is a Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His research addresses the problems of navigation and mapping for autonomous underwater vehicles, self-driving vehicles, and other types of mobile robots. He has a degree in Electrical Engineering and Science from the University of Pennsylvania and PhD in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford. He is a Technical Advisor at Toyota Research Institute.

Check out John's TEDx Talk on 'How AI helps robots see our world', and this Toyota Research Institute video of autonomous drifting.

Find out more about the Marine Robotics Group at MIT: https://marinerobotics.mit.edu/ 

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Robot Talk will be back for a new season on the 27th September 2024 — make sure you're subscribed to be the first to hear the latest episodes!