AI-Hybrid Automation with a Deployed Mobile Manipulation Robot | Diligent Robots' Vivian Chu

Hello Robot Friends. Welcome to edition #146 of The Robot Industry Podcast. My guest today is Vivian Chu. Vivian Chu is a roboticist with over a decade of experience in human-robot interaction. She created Moxi and Poli, and applied her HRI and machine learning expertise to platforms like PR2, Meka, and Kinova Jaco2. She has worked at Google[X], Honda Research Institute, and IBM Research. Vivian holds a Ph.D. in Robotics from Georgia Tech and an M.S.E. from the University of Pennsylvania. She’s been recognized by MIT Technology Review (35 Innovators Under 35), Fortune (40 Under 40), named a Google Anita Borg Scholar and Stanford EECS Rising Star, awarded Best Cognitive Robotics Paper at ICRA, and featured on Robohub’s 25 Women in Robotics list. Questions: Vivian, Tell us about Diligent, who are you and what do you make? Where are you located? How did you get interested in robotics and automation? What is Moxi? Why did you decide on hospitals as your first use case? Who are the economic drivers and decision makers in hospital and what are their pain points? What are some of the surprises that you learned from hospitals, about robotics? Why Diligent chose to go AI-hybrid, vs all-in on AI? The importance of execution > demos and what deployment taught Diligent that the lab couldn’t Building robots with a “human-first approach,” designing robots to serve as coworkers instead of replacements. The key design elements that make Moxi ultra- adaptable, dexterous, and safe? Let’s talk about data? Is this something that hospitals are interested in? You just brought in some new executives to your team. What is next for Diligent — now that you have proven yourselves in hospitals, do you have plans to expand into offices, factories? What makes your stack capable of doing so? Future of robotics working with people? Did we forget to talk about anything? You are a busy, new mom. When you are not automating, innovating, building robots, or working with companies and AI, what do you enjoy doing for hobbies? How can people get a hold of you and find out more about Diligent? I would like to mention A3: the Association for Advancing Automation. they are the leading automation trade association for robotics, vision and imaging, motion control and motors and the industrial artificial intelligence technologies.  Visit Automate dot org to learn more. If you would like to get in touch with us at THE robot industry podcast, you can find me jim beretta on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimberetta/ Today’s podcast was produced by Customer Attraction Industrial Marketing and I would like to thank my team: Chris Gray for the music, Geoffy Bremner for audio production, my business partner Janet and our new sponsor: Mecademic Industrial Robots ~ world-leading manufacturers of compact and precise industrial robots. https://mecademic.com/ Thanks, too, to our regular sponsor, Ehrhardt Automation Systems, located in Granite City, Illinois. Warm Regards, Jim Jim Beretta Customer Attraction & The Robot Industry Podcast London, ON