This Is Robotics: Radio News #35

The Wild, Wild World of Humanoid Robots 2025
The Rise of Humanoid Robots in 2021: How We Got to Now

Good fortune has befallen humanoid robotics in this fast-paced year for humanoids 2025.

Join us for the journey to Now! That journey arguably can be said to have begun in August of 2021 with the emergence of high-octane influencer, Elon Musk, and his introduction of Optimus to the heralded list of humanoid names.

Surely, humanity has been at the chase for a humanoid likeness for centuries. Modernists may insist that WABOT-1, built in 1970 by Ichiro Kato at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, was the first humanoid robot. And they’d be correct. Since WABOT-1, the list of humanoids has been chock-full of exemplary technology and technologists. Not to diminish the robust efforts of any precursors, but all of it seemed to be progressing in slow motion and a bit of anonymity until the world’s richest man, with a half-dozen spectacular moonshots under his belt, suddenly jumped into humanoid prominence.

ChatGP-3 in 2022 breathed a new kind of life into humanoids as code capitulated to GenAI prompts. NVIDIA’s Jetson Thor in 2024, dubbed the “Universal Robotics Computer” offered up a humanoid compute force never seen prior to Thor. And then China’s DeepSeek created a platform for embodied AI that was a simple, cheap, and effective doorway for humanoids to enter and learn from the physical world of humans.

Episode #35 of This Is Robotics takes a look at this wild, wild journey for humanoids that’s just beginning.

Please join us in this journey together as Elon Musk, Tom Dohmke, Jensen Huang, Peter Diamandis, Emad Mostaque, Yann LeCun, and Eric Jang build out the 2025 landscape of humanoid robotics.

Heartfelt Thanks for Making This Is Robotics the #1 Global Robotics News Podcast

This Is Robotics: End-Of-Year Program, 30 December 2024
What Was the Most Important Story in Robotics for 2024?

Yes, there Was Only One.

And no, it wasn’t bipedal humanoids. Not by a long shot. Not as long as there’s gravity and Mother Nature to contend with.

The hype and investment millions going into bipedal humanoid robots these days feels a lot like the over-hyped, over-heated, craziness of the multi-billion-dollar market that was self-driving cars back in 2009-2017. Remember?

Google invested $1.1 billion, so say recent Waymo court documents. Yikes!

The single, most important news story for 2024 is now changing our lives and futures.

Please join us. 30 December 2024 for that news story’s reveal.

“You’re Going to Love What You Hear!

Heartfelt Thanks for Making This Is Robotics the #1 Global Robotics News Podcast

PITTSBURGH: HOW ROBOTICS SAVED A CITY
By 2000, 29 steel companies in Pittsburgh had declared bankruptcy, cratering its middleclass, and any future upon which the great city might have had hopes to grow and thrive. How did robotics bring the city back from the dead?

Pittsburgh: From Dying Steel Town to Global Robotics Hub by Henry Lenard

IS THIS THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMRS?
Unless you’ve been under a rock somewhere, you’ve undoubtedly heard the noise of their wheels and the rush of their whizzing by you, either on TV news, YouTube, or better, in person. What you’re seeing and hearing is the future arriving in a hurry. They’re called AMRs, robotics newest celebrities, autonomous mobile robots.

GLOBAL ROBOTICS PATENTS: THE PATENT WARS!
Patent activity is a useful indicator of technological progress and innovation in robotics. “Between 2005 and 2019, 72,618 robotics patents were granted worldwide.” Who is leading, who is on the rise, and who are the also-rans?

In other words, the patent wars! Who’s winning? Let’s take a look.

THREE BREAKTHROUGHS: CAPSULE ROBOTICS, THE ALL-ROBOT AUTO PLANT, AND THE DEXTEROUS, FIVE-FINGERED COBOT HAND
Instrument-free, noninvasive diagnosis and therapy inside the digestive tract will be performed through a new branch of robotics: capsule robotics.

In Japan, it seems that only “smart” robots need apply for work at Nissan’s brand new “intelligent” auto plant.

What’s the next big breakthrough tech for the cobot. How about a dexterous, sophisticated five-fingered hand?

Our Annual Tribute to Pittsburgh and Its People
Heartwarming & Inspirational Holiday Story
The Fall & Rise of Pittsburgh
From Dying Steel Town to Global Robotics Hub

Hello folks and welcome to This Is Robotics. I’m your host and fellow companion, Tom Green.

The last half of 2024 is upon us, robotics-driven automation is in rapid ascendancy once again, especially now since 2024 is showing how robotics engages with GenAI, and how prompt engineering is significantly increasing the ease of adoption for robots everywhere.

Last month, we gave you a longish one-hour show, which was necessary for it was meant to support my keynote address at SuperTechFT in San Francisco.

If you have yet to listen to it, it’s Episode # 31 and deals with how quickly computer code has capitulated to prompt engineering…and why. Plus, the new breed of workers on the rise who are being hailed as the “New Collar” generation of workers.

This month, we are listening to our global fans for feedback. We have a global fan base in 68 countries according to Buzzsprout stats.

A fangirl Celina from the Philippines wants us to reprise a woman’s show. Specifically, the rise of Alice Zhang (Verge Genomics) and her pursuit of answers to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS. Thank you, Celina for also pointing out how this story highlights how human insight creates the technical challenge and how LLMs are then employed to reveal a way forward for bio research. For Alice, it was robotics and LLMs cracking the code for ALS.

During Alice’s piece, she laments how broken bio research is and why. Which leads to our second fan request from Martin in Augsburg, Germany, who was fascinated with robotics in bio labs working with AI in what he calls Pharma 4.0.

New drug research and discovery companies with strange, new names like Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Arctoris, Insitro, Relay Therapeutics, and Insilico Medicine are forging the way. Martin, good pick.

We lead off this month humankinds almost innate fascination and attraction to humanoid robots. Why is that? We let a half dozen experts offer up some truly interesting insights and theories on just why that is. Those insights are wrapped up in a show about human attraction to robots where we commemorate National Kiss & Make up Day which is coming up in August.

Okay, strap on your earphones or pop in your earbuds, which Buzzsprout tells us 3,000 people do daily worldwide to listen to This Is Robotics. We’re thrilled you can join us today. Thanks and welcome.

https://asianroboticsreview.com/home591-html

2024: The Most Important Year in the History of Robotics!

Companion podcast #31 to Keynote address at SuperTechFT 3 July 2024

Happy to be with you one and all. I’m Tom Green, your host and companion on this very special journey for 2024. We are only halfway through the year, and already 2024 has shown us that it is the most important year in the history of robotics.

This podcast will show you why that is.

This podcast is a companion to the live keynote address I will give at SuperTechFT in San Francisco on July 3rd 2024. I want to first thank Dr. Albert Hu, president and director of education at SuperTechFT, and to the staff and patrons of SuperTechFT for inviting me.

The title of my keynote: 2024: The Most Important Year in the History of Robotics!

What other year can possibly compete for top honors other than 2024?

2024 eliminated the barrier to entry for digital programming by eliminating the need to code.

As Tesla's former chief of AI, Andrej Karpathy put it: "Welcome to the hottest new programming language...English"

2024 opened the door of AI prompt engineering to millions of new jobs and careers in millions of SME industries worldwide.

So explains: Andrew Ng, investor and former head of Google Brain and Baidu.

2024 converged GenAI with robotics, broadened robot/cobot applications, and freed robots from complexity of operation.

So announced NVIDIA’s CEO and founder Jensen Huang at the company’s March meeting.

2024 reinvigorated the liberal arts, creative thinking, expository writing, and language as vital new components in developing robotics applications.

So reflects Stephen Wolfram physicist and creator of Mathematica

2024 defined the need for the GenAI & the "New Collar" Worker Connection: Vitally needed workers for AI/robot-driven industry worldwide, and just maybe, the revitalization of America’s middle class…or the middle class of any nation.

Sarah Boisvert technologist, factory owner and wrote the book on the New Collar Workforce

Suddenly in mid-2024, technology has thrown us into a brand-new world

And it’s only early July of 2024...can you believe it?

“Artificial intelligence and robotics could catapult both fields to new heights.”

The 4-Year Plight: SMEs in Search of Robots!

Tech News May Fade, but Its Stories Are Forever!

GenAI & "New Collar" Connection

Did AI Just Free Humanity from Code?

Heartfelt Thanks for Making This Is Robotics the #1 Global Robotics News Podcast

Welcome to a special edition of This Is Robotics for a special look at the "New Collar" Workforce.

Robot-Driven Automation's "New Collar" Workforce

Vitally needed workers for robot-driven manufacturing, and just maybe, the revitalization of America’s middle class.

They’re definitely a new breed!
Don’t call them blue collar and don’t call them white collar. Blue, many perceive as life-long drudgery with a wasted body by the age of fifty, and white as onerous college debt with the worst ROI imaginable.

They avoid large factories and mega warehouses where for every robot deployed three jobs go missing. Besides, those gigs are way up there on the blue-collar drudgery meter. They also shun white-collar offices that track keystrokes, screen email, and surveil worker productivity.

Around them, the world is just beginning to make room for their kind and see value in their non-traditional worldview. Colleges have dropped the SAT. Law schools jettisoned the LSAT. And now employers large and small are dropping the college degree requirement on resumes. A move that seems reasonable since 66% of the country’s population is without a college degree.

See related: States Are Leading the Effort to Remove Degree Requirements from Government Jobs.

As the NYT blared in a headline, which must have put a smile on the faces of all these new-breed contrarians: “Emerging fields like AI, EVs, and robotics feel like a new age in jobs is beginning to settle in, jobs that require advanced skills but not necessarily advanced degrees.”

READ MORE>>

Heartfelt Thanks for Making This Is Robotics the #1 Global Robotics News Podcast

Has Code Writing Capitulated To GenAI?

What exactly just took place, and why?

Suddenly this March, we all woke up one morning to find code fighting for its life. Why so fast? Why so suddenly? Why so completely? Unexpectedly and quietly code is disappearing. Why is that? Is AI’s argument that convincing? Sure seems that way. It was a little like the Berlin Wall: imposingly there for a few decades, then suddenly gone and forgotten.

We’ll take a look at what happened to code, and what’s next for robotics. Don’t despair. The remedy is good!

In early 2023, U.S. tech industries cut more than 190,000 employees from the workforce. Tens of thousands were coders. Tens of thousands of individuals who spent billions of dollars to learn how to code, so that they could get a “good” job.

"The new philosophy calls all into doubt," wrote the poet John Donne over 400 years ago. Indeed, GenAI's prompt engineering has done just that.

Prompt engineering in AI is the process of designing and refining prompts—questions or instructions—which are at the heart of some of the most advanced AI applications…and growing.

Join us as experts Andrew Ng, Stephen Wolfram, and Michael Welsh walk us through the new world of GenAI and the unparalleled opportunities that await for those who don’t wait.

See also:

Did AI Just Free Humanity from Code?

What About You? A Primer to Combat GenAI Anxiety

Experts on AI & Robot Convergence for 2040

Heartfelt Thanks for Making This Is Robotics the #1 Global Robotics News Podcast

Hi folks, welcome to This Is Robotics for February 2024, Episode #28. I’m Tom Green, your host and companion as we travel together through the big, wide world of modern robotics…and now, robotics is getting even better as it converges with artificial intelligence.

Ah, the age of smart robots is upon us.

Thanks again for making This Is Robotics the #1 robotics news podcast worldwide…for two years running.

We did some investigative journalism this month to find out why…and we were surprised at what we found. You will be as well. An article series on the topic we published in Asian Robotics Review titled Why So Little Robot Automation in America? got over 10,000 hits. Our email response from our readership attested to the fact that we were not the only ones surprised by our findings. It’s accompanied by a news report from CBS which also covered the strange state of robotics in the U.S.

Then we’ll dip off into What’s New in Robotics? What’s New in Robotics? is the blog we write in partnership with Robotiq.

From the blog, we present here at This Is Robotics three FIRST-EVERS in robotics. We love what people have been doing with robots and cobots lately. Simply amazing!

Two of them hail from Korea: Hyundai’s micro-factory in Singapore; and a huge breakthrough by Koreans in teaching robots to respond to the human voice. Then we nip over to Argonne Laboratories to see cobots in a first-ever making medical radioisotopes.

We close out the podcast with what is the biggest story in robotics for the foreseeable future: Can Robots Save East Asia?

China, Korea, & Japan are suffering from a new pandemic: Too Few Workers, Too Many Elderly, and Too Little Automation.

China, Korea, and Japan are plagued with the very same “too few, too many, and too little” affliction simultaneously.

The clock is ticking on China, Korea, and Japan. The five years 2025 to 2030 will be critical. Each country has a plan. What is each doing…and can each plan work?

We have been following this mega-story since 2023. Along with an in-depth article series on the subject in Asian Robotics Review, we brought the story into this month’s podcast as well. We’ll show you what we know.


As always, look in the show notes for all the links to the online articles.

Thanks for coming. We appreciate your attention and loyalty.