Sunday, April 11, 2010

recent discovery: the Robots Podcast

As someone who at least imagines himself to have a reputation for being a robotics enthusiast, you might expect me to be right on top of what are currently the best sources of open information in the field, but you'd be wrong.

My enthusiasm is primarily for service robots, machines that do tasks people find uncomfortable, boring, demeaning, dirty, dangerous, or insufficiently valuable, such that you cannot find people willing to do them for what you can afford to pay in any but the most starkly depressed economies.

This is a category that hasn't received much attention in recent years, with most press/blog coverage going to robots that physically mimic humans to varying degrees, and most hobbyist activity directed towards battlebots.

So perhaps it's understandable that something as excellent as the Robots Podcast could escape my awareness for nearly two years. In that time this biweekly podcast has accumulated a very impressive collection of interviews with some of the most brilliant people working in robotics and closely related fields.

It's available both via RSS and on iTunes. Do check it out!

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