Episode 103: Keenan Wyrobek - delivering medicine by drone
Robot Talk
Claire chatted to Keenan Wyrobek from Zipline about drones for delivering life-saving medicine to remote locations. Keenan Wyrobek is co-founder and head of product and engineering at , the world’s first drone delivery service whose focus is delivering life-saving medicine to the most difficult to reach places on earth. Prior to Zipline, Keenan was a co-founder and director of the Personal Robotics Program at Willow Garage. He was involved in launching the Robot Operating System (ROS) and shipping PR2, the first personal robot for software R&D. Keenan has spent years delivering high tech...
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Episode 102: Isabella Fiorello - soft robots inspired by plants
Robot Talk
I chatted to Isabella Fiorello from the University of Freiburg about plant-inspired robots made from living materials. is a Junior Group Leader and Principal Investigator of the Bioinspired Plant-hybrid Materials group at the University of Freiburg in Germany. She has a Master’s Degree in Industrial Biotechnology from the University of Turin in Italy and a PhD in Biorobotics from Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Italy. Her research focusses on the development of biologically-inspired microfabricated living materials able to precisely interact with complex unstructured surfaces for applications...
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Episode 101: Christos Bergeles - microscopic surgical robots
Robot Talk
Claire chatted to Christos Bergeles from King's College London about micro-surgical robots to deliver therapies deep inside the body. received his PhD in Robotics from ETH Zurich in Switzerland in 2011. As a Professor at King’s College London, he directs the “Robotics and Vision in Medicine Lab” whose mission is to develop micro-surgical robots that deliver regenerative therapies deep inside the human body. He holds funding for the development of instrumentation that delivers stem cells to diseased retinal layers in the eye. He and his team are very active in public engagement and...
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Episode 100: Mini Rai - robots in space
Robot Talk
Claire chatted to Mini Rai from Orbit Rise about orbital and planetary robots. is the founding Director of Orbit Rise Ltd and an honorary Professor at the University of Lincoln. Previously, she was the Global Chair in Robotic Engineering at the University of Lincoln and an Associate Professor at the Surrey Space Centre. Mini has over 27 years of research and innovation experience in Space Engineering and Technology. With deep-rooted expertise in robotics, automation, control and systems engineering, she has led a large and diverse portfolio of national and international programmes on space...
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Episode 99: Joe Wolfel - robots mapping the deep ocean
Robot Talk
Claire chatted to Joe Wolfel from Terradepth about autonomous submersible robots for collecting ocean data. 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...
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Episode 98: Gabriella Pizzuto - robotic chemists to discover new materials
Robot Talk
Claire chatted to Gabriella Pizzuto from the University of Liverpool about intelligent robotic manipulators for laboratory automation. 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...
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Episode 97: Pratap Tokekar - robot swarms for environmental monitoring
Robot Talk
Claire chatted to Pratap Tokekar from the University of Maryland about how teams of robots with different capabilities can work together. 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...
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Episode 96: Maria Elena Giannaccini - soft robots in medicine and healthcare
Robot Talk
Claire chatted to Maria Elena Giannaccini from the University of Aberdeen about soft and bioinspired robotics for healthcare and beyond. 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...
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Episode 95: Jonathan Walker - helping companies grow with robotics
Robot Talk
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 . 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,...
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Episode 94: Esyin Chew - humanoid robots for health and social care
Robot Talk
Claire chatted to Esyin Chew from Cardiff Metropolitan University about service and social humanoid robots in healthcare and education. is the Director of the , 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...
info_outlineClaire chatted to Edward Johns from Imperial College London, all about robotic manipulators, learning, and artificial intelligence.
Edward Johns is the Director of the Robot Learning Lab at Imperial College London, where he is also a Senior Lecturer. He completed a PhD in Computer Vision at Imperial College and was then a Research Fellow in the Dyson Robotics Lab at Imperial College. In 2017, he was awarded a prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship. Since founding the Robot Learning Lab in 2018, he and his team have been developing efficient methods for robots to learn new skills for physically interacting with objects, with a particular emphasis on everyday tasks.
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