#374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics
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The following is a conversation with Robert Plater, CEO of Boston Dynamics, a legendary robotics company that over 30 years has created some of the most elegant, dexterous, and simply amazing robots ever built, including the humanoid robot Atlas and the robot dog Spot. one or both of whom you've probably seen on the internet either dancing, doing backflips, opening doors, or throwing around heavy objects. Robert has led both the development of Boston Dynamics humanoid robots and their physics-based simulation software. He has been with the company from the very beginning, including its roots at MIT, where he received his PhD in aeronautical engineering. This was in 1994 at the legendary MIT Leg Lab.
He wrote his PhD thesis on robot gymnastics. as part of which he programmed a bipedal robot to do the world's first 3D robotic somersault. Robert is a great engineer, roboticist, and leader, and Boston Dynamics, to me as a roboticist, is a truly inspiring company. This conversation was a big honor and pleasure, and I hope to do a lot of great work with these robots in the years to come. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got NetSuite for business management software, Linode for Linux systems, and Element for zero sugar electrolytes. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our team, we're always hiring.
Go to lexfriedman.com slash hiring. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting. But if you must commit the horrible, terrible crime of skipping them, please do check out our sponsors. I do enjoy their stuff. I really do. And maybe you will as well. This show is brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. Running a business, as this podcast reveals, from Robert Plater and Boston Dynamics is really hard. It's not just about the design of the systems. It's not just about the engineering, the software, the hardware, all the complicated research that goes into it, all the different prototypes, all the failure upon failure upon failure in the early stages, in the middle stages of getting these incredible robots to work.
It's all the glue that ties a company together. And for that, you have to use the best tools for the job. I hope to run a business, a large business that actually builds stuff one day. And boy, is it much more than just the innovation and the engineering. I understand that deeply. And you should be hiring the best team for that job and use the best tools for that job. And that's where NetSuite can help out, hopefully can help you out. You can start now with no payment or interest for six months. Go to netsuite.com slash lex to access their one-of-a-kind financing program. That's netsuite.com slash lex. This episode is also brought to you by Linode, now called Akamai and their incredible Linux virtual machines.
I sing praises to the greatest operating systems of all time, which is Linux. There's so many different beautiful flavors of Linux. My favorite is probably the different sub-flavors of Ubuntu, Ubuntu Mate. That's what I use for my personal development projects in general when I want to feel comfortable and fully customized. But I've used so many other Linuxes, distributional Linuxes. But that's not what Linode is about. or it is in part, but it actually takes those Linux boxes and scales them arbitrarily to where you can do compute, not just on one machine, but on many machines, customize them, make sure everything works reliably, and when it doesn't, there's amazing human customer service with real humans.
That's something that should be emphasized in this day of chat GPT. real human beings that are good at what they do and figure out how to solve problems if they ever come up. Linode, now called Akamai, is just amazing. If compute is something you care about for your business, for your personal life, for your happiness, for anything, then now you should check them out.
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