Automated with Brian Heater
Episodes
iRobot CEO Gary Cohen on Turnarounds, Feature Wars, and the Future of Roomba
18 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Robot vacuums have been on the market for over 20 years and are still in fewer than 20 percent of US homes. In this episode of Automated, Brian Heater...
Mehul Nariyawala on Why Home Robots Must Be Vision-First and “Delegate, Not Collaborate”
11 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Home robotics has been promised for decades, but most products still struggle to meet everyday expectations. In this episode of Automated, Brian Heate...
Rob Cochran on Shipping a Developer-First Humanoid at Fauna Robotics
04 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
“We wanted to ship before we talked.”That’s how Rob Cochran, co-founder of Fauna Robotics, explains the company’s decision to stay in stealth ...
Péter Fankhauser on Building a Fleet of Autonomous Robots at ANYbotics
25 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
“Nobody wants a robot.” That’s how Péter Fankhauser, CEO of ANYbotics, reframes industrial automation. Customers are not buying quadrupeds for ...
Building Safe, Scalable Robots at GM With Mikell Taylor
18 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Talk about humanoid robots is everywhere, but how useful are they in industrial settings?In this live episode of Automated, Brian Heater talks with Mi...
How Democratizing Access to Robotics will Benefit All: Intrinsic’s Brian Gerkey on Open-Source Software
11 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Gerkey believes deeply in the importance of open-sourcing robotics technology. His career, with time spent at Willow Garage, Open Robotics, and ...
When AI Leaves the Demo Stage: Kence Anderson on What Lasts
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The most interesting work around AI doesn’t occur at the height of the hype cycle.Kence Anderson has watched promising ideas overperform in demos, u...
Colin Angle on iRobot, Regulation, and the Future of Physical AI
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
After three decades in consumer robotics, Colin Angle is still asking the hardest questions about trust, value, and what robots are actually for.Colin...
Eric Danziger on the Reality Gap in Robotics and AI
21 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The current interest in robotics follows a pattern we’ve seen before. Eric Danziger has spent years working through those cycles and offers perspect...
Waymo’s Vincent Vanhoucke on Embodied AI and Robotics
14 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Robotics has a habit of compressing timelines in theory and stretching them out in practice. Few people are better positioned to talk about that gap t...
Rohit Sharma on Venture Capital, Robotics, and Long-Term Thinking
07 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
True Ventures was an early investor in key robotics startups like Diligent and Bear Flag, thanks, in part, to Rohit Sharma’s thoughtful eye. The ven...
From Diffusion Policy to Dexterity: Robotics in Review with Erin McColl of Toyota Research Institute
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
‘‘Twas the night before Automated and all through TRI, not a robot was stirring, just Erin McColl and I. We watched several YouTube videos with gr...
Designing the Machines of Disney’s Avatar with Ben Procter
17 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ahead of Disney’s Avatar: Fire and Ash’s release, we’ve got one hot conversation with Ben Procter. The film’s production designer, who previou...
How Robots Fail, Learn, and Improve: A Conversation with Holly Yanco
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For more than 30 years, University of Massachusetts Lowell professor Holly Yanco has been a leading mind in human-robot interaction. It seems the rest...
The Robot Ending Loneliness in Aged Care: Grace Brown on Building Abi
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For Grace Brown, a humanoid robot future is a hopeful future. Andromeda’s Abi is designed to build connections in an increasingly isolated world, fo...
Dusty Robotics CEO Tessa Lau on Reinventing Construction Through Automation
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2018, Dusty Robotics quite literally got in on the ground floor of automating the $2 trillion U.S. construction industry. Founder and CEO Tessa Lau...
Dianne Eldridge on AI, Automation, and the Future of Work
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
AI Go-to-Market Lead for Energy & Utilities at Google AI, Dianne Eldridge, knows how to communicate with executives. The automation vet is also an...
Ken Goldberg: Solving Robotics’ Hardest Problems: Dexterity, Data, and Design
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ken Goldberg is a great resource to have on speed dial when those complex robotics questions emerge. As a longtime U.C. Berkeley professor and cofound...
Helen Greiner on Building iRobot and the Future of Home Automation
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A crush on a fictional astromech droid at age 11 set Helen Grenier down a path toward cofounding iRobot, the most influential consumer robotics firm o...
PSYONIC’s Aadeel Akhtar on the Future of Bionics, Robotics, and Accessibility
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What began as a University of Illinois engineering project has grown into a startup aimed at improving lives. Psyonic CEO Aadeel Ahktar discusses the ...
Building Robots That Work for People: Amazon’s Playbook for Scaled Automation
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Amazon Robotics' Chief Technologist discusses his journey from undergraduate aeronautics to helping the world's largest retailer deploy one million ro...
Physical AI, Play, and the Path Beyond Humanoids with Brad Porter of Cobot
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As a long time Amazon VP, Brad Porter knows what it takes to deploy industrial robots at scale. Now doing the same with his own company, Cobot, Porter...
Designing the “Good Robot”: Inside Apptronik’s Vision for Humanoids
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Apptronik CEO Jeff Cardenas has remained one of the more transparent and pragmatic executives in the humanoid robotics race. Here he takes on the Aust...
Universal Robots’ Roberta Nelson Shea on Balancing Safety and Productivity in Automation
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps no one has done more to promote industrial robot safety than Roberta Nelson Shea. For decades, Universal Robotics’ global technical complian...
Rodney Brooks on Robotics, AI, and the Future of Automation
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When I want an automation reality check, I go to Rodney Brooks, one of the past century’s most influential roboticists. The Robust.AI CTO cofounded ...
Marc Raibert: Half a Century of Innovation, and Still Looking Ahead
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Few alive have left as large a mark on robotics as Marc Raibert. After founding and running Boston Dynamics for three decades, the former MIT professo...
Melonee Wise on Humanoid Robots, Safety Tradeoffs, and Real-World Deployment
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When we recorded this episode, Melonee Wise was the chief product officer at humanoid pioneer, Agility Robotics. After kickstarting her career as empl...
Deepu Talla: Building the Future of Robotics at NVIDIA
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Just over a decade ago, NVIDIA got out of mobile processing and into robotics. Deepu Talla helped lead the risky push that is now paying off in the fo...
Automated Trailer
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Robotics, AI, and automation are reshaping the world around us. Meet top minds from NVIDIA, Boston Dynamics, Agility, MIT, AWS, Apptronik, and more, o...