Julien Bourgeois is professor of computer science at the University of Franche-Comté (UFC) in France. He is part of the FEMTO-ST institute (UMR CNRS 6174) where he leads the complex networks team. His research interests are in distributed intelligent MEMS, P2P networks and security management for complex networks. He is currently visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He has been invited professor at Emory University (US) in 2011 and in Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2010 and 2011. He co-lead the distributed sensor/actuators MEMS network topic in the CNRS PPF Distributed Intelligent Microsystems. He created and then co-led the Smart Surface project. In 2011, he created the Smart Blocks project which aims at building a self-reconfigurable conveying modular plate-form composed of MEMS sensors and actuators.

Achim Lilienthal a professor for Computer Science at Örebro University and head of the Mobile Robotics and Olfaction (MRO) Lab, a research group at the AASS Research Centre formerly called the "Learning Systems Lab". By design, the research directions of the MRO Lab are aligned with his personal research interests. The general focus is on perception systems for mobile robots that operate in unconstrained, dynamic environments. A major aim is to integrate research results timely in industrial demonstrators. More specifically, his research addresses Rich 3D Perception, Robot Vision and Mobile Robot Olfaction.

Cristina Andersson started out as a business consultant for major Finish companies and got interested in the quickly growing opportunities in robotics when she wrote a book on the subject. The key word for here in this work was autonomous, robots constantly expand the type of decisions they can take and that makes it possible to use them in ever more situations and their value increase quickly.

Michael Nielsen is consultant at the Teknologisk Institut in Taastrup. He specializes in media technology such as interface design, tool progamming (MFC), signal- and image processing, pattern recognition, 3D reconstruction, computer vision, ray tracing, color and light theory, and shadow segmentation. His goal is to create innovative media products that will merge the real world with electronic world for enhanced productibility and immersion. The systems should be a natural part of modern life and thus be aware of the dynamic environment that surrounds them.

Nicole Immorlica is a senior principle researcher at Microsoft whos research lies broadly within the field of algorithmic game theory. Using tools and modeling concepts from both theoretical computer science and economics, Nicole hopes to explain, predict, and shape behavioral patterns in various online and offline systems, markets, and games. Her areas of specialty include social networks and mechanism design. Nicole received her Ph.D. from MIT in Cambridge, MA in 2005 and then completed three years of postdocs at both Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA and CWI in Amsterdam, Netherlands before accepting a job as an assistant professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL in 2008. She joined the Microsoft Research New England Lab in 2012.

Gabriel Skantze is co-founder and Chief Scientist at Furhat Robotics and Professor in speech technology at KTH with a specialization in conversational systems. He has a background in research into how humans use spoken communication to interact. In his research he studies human communication and develops computational models that allow computers and robots to speak face-to-face with humans.

Lars Dalgaard has worked with robot technology for more than 20 years as entrepreneur, teacher, lecturer, researcher, consultant, and since 2014 as Head of Service Robotics at the Danish Technological Institute, Robot Technology. Technology-wise his focus is on flexible mobile robots for logistics in industry and healthcare, and on civil deployment of autonomous drones for inspection and manipulation. Solution-wise his focus is on system-level design where the value proposition is created in the intersection between the technical, organisational, human, and economic needs and demands. Through the years, he's worked with robot technology in all shapes and sizes spanning from field robots and mobile robots for nursery gardens, over self- reconfigurable modular robots and modular robot technology for dynamic layout changes in pig stables, to butler robots and interactive room barriers.

Harri Ketamo Ph.D., is an entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in cognitive sciences, computational intelligence, complex adaptive systems and game development. Currently he is founder & chairman of Headai, a company developing General Semantic AI for transparent decision making. He's also actively participating academic research as a senior fellow at University of Turku and at Satakunta University of Applied Sciences. Previously Ketamo has been e.g. founder & CEO of gameMiner (game AI), xTask (adaptive learning) and SkillPixels (seroius games). He has had more than 300 presentations, published more than 100 peer-reviewed research articles and developed products (games, MOOCs, adaptive systems, AI) used in more than 120 countries all over the world.

Christian Guttmann is Global VP of Artificial Intelligence at Tieto, an IT software and service company providing IT and product engineering services, with approximately 15,000 employees, active in around 20 countries.

Federico Pecora is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the Center for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems (AASS). He was previously a research assistant at the Italian National Research Council (ISTC-CNR), where he worked on AI tools for space mission planning on a grant from the European Space Agency.

Stefano Stramigioli is Professor of Advanced Robotics at the University of Twente where he leads the Robotics And Mechatronics (RAM) Lab. He is also covering a guest co-chair position at the International Laboratory of BioMechatronics and Energy Efficient Robotics at ITMO.

Sebastian Weisenburger studied at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Università degli studi di Padova (Italy) and holds a Masters degree in Philosophy, Communication Studies and Political Science.

Nicola Tomatis is CEO at BlueBotics, who aim to become world leader in autonomous navigation with the mission to enable the mobility of vehicles for the automation in the professional use market.

Søren Peter Johansen is Technology Manager at the Danish Technological Institute (DTI) He has state-of-the-art knowledge on the use of robotics and knowledge about the barriers for implementing robots in the industry. This is based on countless visits to production companies complemented with 20 years hands-on experience in concept-design, development, management and implementations of robotics- and automation-solutions world-wide, which have given him experience with several brands of robots, vision-systems, sensors, plc's, pneumatics, mechanics and pc-program development.

Hans Kimblad is technical director at Digital Metal, Höganäs. They are known for their proprietary precision ink-jet technology for additive manufacturing and 3D printing of metal components and systems. Digital Metal belongs to the global Höganäs Group, which is headquartered in Sweden and best known for its pioneering work in metal powders.

Sven Schmidt-Rohr is the CEO, Co-Founder at ArtiMinds Robotics, an industrial software DeepTech company.

Dirk Thomas is a Software Engineer at the non-profit Open Source Robotics Foundation. He is working on the core of the robotic framework ROS (the Robot Operating System) and is the technical lead for ROS 2. Dirk received his PhD degree in Computer Science in the Simulation, Systems Optimization and Robotics Group at TU Darmstadt, Germany.

Anouk Wipprecht works in the emerging field of "FashionTech"; a rare combination of fashion design combined with engineering, science and interaction/user experience design. Producing an impressive body of tech-enhanced designs bringing together fashion and technology in an unusual way: she creates technological couture; with systems around the body that tend towards artificial intelligence; projected as 'host' systems on the human body, her designs move, breath, and react to the environment around them.

Paul Ekas is president of SAKE Robotics, who's vision is to deliver the lowest cost, high dexterity robotic grippers (“hands”) that enable next generation robots. In this podcast, Paul talks about his EZGripper and how he designed it to be low cost, lightweight, robust and to offer reliable gripping of small and large objects.