Ep 59 - David LaRose from Carnegie Robotics on the Reality of Robotics

https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Podcasts221/v4/29/8f/87/298f876d-2c9c-d9e2-3798-617277fcbe08/mza_1632181646836771102.jpg/600x600bb.jpg

Automate It: A Robotics Podcast

Polymath Robotics

63 episodes

5 days ago

Each week, the co-founders of Polymath Robotics sit down to give you the inside scoop on the robotics industry. They'll share war stories, weird facts, and little-known approaches to working with robots (with a special focus on autonomous vehicles). About the hosts: Stefan Seltz-Axmacher is the CEO of Polymath Robotics, and is best known as the founder of Starsky Robotics, an early autonomous trucking pioneer. Ilia Baranov, CTO, was employee # 10 at Clearpath Robotics, has led teams at Amazon's home robot division, and owned the ROS repo after Willow Garage shut down.

Technology

RSS

All content for Automate It: A Robotics Podcast is the property of Polymath Robotics and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Technology

https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/staging/podcast_uploaded_nologo/33169460/33169460-1737397956101-3c42e8aa9c1c4.jpg

Ep 59 - David LaRose from Carnegie Robotics on the Reality of Robotics

Automate It: A Robotics Podcast

1 hour 13 minutes 27 seconds

6 months ago

Ep 59 - David LaRose from Carnegie Robotics on the Reality of Robotics

This week on Automate It, we're excited to have a special guest!

Carnegie Robotics co-founder David LaRose joins the podcast to share his perspective on the evolution of robotics from academic research to rugged real-world systems.

He reflects on what’s changed - and what hasn’t - over the last 15 years, from safety systems that still rely on spreadsheets to why so many autonomous vehicle projects have stalled.

David also unpacks the real challenges of selling to the DoD, the importance of enabling the next generation of robotics companies with hardened components, and what it’s like crawling through Florida cornfields in the name of agtech R&D.

(00:00) Introduction and welcome to the episode
(00:32) Robot Invention Game: Foundational Models for Space Exploration
(18:30) David’s journey from liberal arts to robotics via IBM and CMU
(20:41) Founding Carnegie Robotics
(23:55) Why the robotics industry hasn’t scaled as fast as expected
(29:18) Safety systems: still slow, manual, and deeply fragmented
(35:17) Why big companies (Amazon, Apple) still struggle with robotics
(40:05) Demos gone wrong: off-by-one bugs, e-stop failures, and bedbugs
(45:38) Working with the DoD: myths, structure, and real challenges
(01:08:30) Launching ruggedized autonomy kits and components online
(01:16:33) Environmental challenges and thermal testing tales
(01:20:42) Advice for roboticists: Embrace collaboration, not just competition
(01:23:00) What’s next for Carnegie Robotics: Supporting the enablers