Episode 5: Exploring Astronomy Through the Eyes of a Robotics Software Engineer

  Join host Pranet Sharma as he sits down with guest Rishi Sundaresan, an employee of Google's Waymo and an MIT graduate, to discuss the overlap between astronomy and robotics software engineering. Topics include: the four steps of robotic perception, how astronomy research and exploration uses similar methods, the next big problem in robotics, how artificial intelligence and machine learning can be utilized in exploration, the power of path-finding algorithms, interpolating vs. extrapolating data, the importance of test data having both quantity and quality, the power of feature detection, how neural networks have improved over time, and why robotics forms one of the most interesting crossroads in science.  For any questions about the show, visit www.skysimplified.com/contact. Thank you for listening, and as always, clear skies!