Robots and the Humans Who Make Them

WhenIEEE Spectrum editors are placing collectively a difficulty of the journal, a narrative on the web site, or an episode of a podcast, we attempt to facilitate dialogue about applied sciences, their improvement, and their implications for society and the planet. We function skilled voices to articulate technical challenges and describe the engineering options they’ve devised to satisfy them.

So when Senior Editor Evan Ackerman cooked up an idea for a robotics podcast, he leaned exhausting into that concept. Ackerman, the world’s premier robotics journalist, talks with roboticists day-after-day, and recording these conversations to show these interviews right into a podcast is normally a comparatively easy course of. However Ackerman needed to strive one thing a little bit bit totally different: bringing two roboticists collectively and simply getting out of the way in which.

“The way in which the Chatbot podcast works is that we invite a few robotics specialists to speak with one another a few matter they’ve in frequent,” Ackerman explains. “They give you the questions, not us, which leads to the sorts of robotics conversations you gained’t hear wherever else—uniquely informative but in addition stunning and enjoyable.”

Every episode focuses on a normal matter the roboticists have in frequent, however as soon as they get to chatting, the company are free to ask one another about no matter pursuits them. Ackerman is there to verify they don’t wander too far into the weeds, as a result of we wish everybody to have the ability to get pleasure from these conversations. “However in any other case, I’ll largely simply be listening,” Ackerman says, “as a result of I’ll be as excited as you’re to see how every episode unfolds.”

We predict this distinctive format offers the listener the within scoop on elements of robotics that solely the roboticists themselves may get one another to disclose. Our first few episodes are already reside. They embrace Skydio CEO Adam Bry and the University of Zurich professor Davide Scaramuzza speaking about autonomous drones, Labrador Systems CEO Mike Dooley and iRobot chief technology officer Chris Jones on the challenges home robots face in unpredictable dwellings, and choreographer Monica Thomas and Amy LaViers of the Robotics, Automation, and Dance (RAD) Lab discussing the way to make Boston Dynamics’ robotic dance.

Now we have a lot extra Chatbot episodes within the works, so please subscribe on no matter podcast service you want, listen and read the transcript on our website, or watch the video variations on the Spectrum YouTube channel. When you’re at it, subscribe to our different biweekly podcast, Fixing the Future, the place we discuss with specialists and Spectrum editors about sustainable options to climate change and different matters of curiosity. And we’d love to listen to what you concentrate on our podcasts: what you want, what you don’t like, and particularly who you’d like to listen to on future episodes.