Stanford Seminar - Humanizing Robot Design, Aaron Edsinger of Hello Robot

December 9, 2022 Aaron Edsinger of Hello Robot We are at the beginning of a transformation where robots and humans cohabitate and collaborate in everyday life. From caring for older adults to supporting workers in service industries, collaborative robots hold incredible potential to improve the quality of life for millions of people. These robots need to be safe, intuitive and simple to use. They need to be affordable enough to allow widespread access and adoption. Ultimately, acceptance of these robots in society will require that the human experience is at the center of their design. In this presentation I will highlight some of my work to humanize robot design over the last two decades. This work includes compliant and safe actuation for humanoids, low-cost collaborative robot arms, and assistive mobile manipulators. Our recent work at Hello Robot has been to commercialize a mobile manipulator named Stretch that can assist older adults and people with disabilities. I’ll detail the human-centered research and development process behind Stretch and present recent work to allow an individual with quadriplegia to control Stretch for everyday tasks. Finally I’ll highlight some of the results by the growing community of researchers working with Stretch. About the speaker: Aaron Edsinger, CEO and Cofounder of Hello Robot. Aaron has a passion for building robots and robot companies. He has founded four companies focused on commercializing human collaborative robots. Two of these companies, Meka Robotics and Redwood Robotics, were acquired by Google in 2013. As Robotics Director at Google, Aaron led the business, product, and technical development of two of Google’s central investments in robotics. Aaron received his Ph.D. from MIT CSAIL in 2007. Learn more about Aaron and Hello Robot: https://hello-robot.com/