Robotics podcasts

Sean Carroll talks with Caltech researcher Erik Winfree about programming DNA to process information and build microscopic machines. They discuss molecular computation, self-assembly, biological information processing and the prospects for DNA-based robots in biology and medicine.

Hosted by Sean Carroll

Benjamin Thompson and Elizabeth Gibney discuss an experiment trapping a single positron and how precise measurements could probe differences between matter and antimatter. The episode then turns to JAXA’s mission to Phobos, including the challenge of operating a wheeled rover under extremely low gravity. These conversations connect laboratory tests of fundamental physics with the engineering and scientific aims of planetary exploration.

Rafael Rosengarten talks with NVIDIA’s Stacie Calad-Thomson about connecting AI-driven drug discovery to physical laboratory work. They examine why consistent experimental data is essential, how agents and robotics could coordinate experiments, and how scientists’ responsibilities may change as laboratories automate. The discussion distinguishes proposing molecules or experiments from executing them, validating results and deciding the next research step.

Hosted by Rafael Rosengarten

Ming-Yu Liu, NVIDIA vice president of research and head of the Cosmos Lab, joins Practical AI hosts Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson to discuss AI systems that interact with the physical world. The conversation examines open models, world models and simulation as foundations for robotics and autonomous vehicles, and how research and deployment can advance physical AI. Published 1 October 2026; publisher runtime 47 minutes 19 seconds.

Hosted by Daniel Whitenack, Chris Benson

Andrew Glester explores how drones, robotics and machine learning support wildlife research and conservation. Blair Costelloe discusses the WildDrone and WildBotics networks and the Mara Elephant Project; Camille Rondeau Saint-Jean describes real-time animal monitoring; William Njoroge explains how Ol Pejeta Conservancy combines drones with established conservation methods. The episode considers population data, field constraints, regulation and collaboration across disciplines.

Hosted by Andrew Glester

Chris Smith investigates autonomous transport through a ride on a self-driving bus in Cambridge. In collaboration with the Royal Institute of Navigation, the programme discusses the engineering, operation and navigation of driverless vehicles. Contributors include Nick Bailey, Daniel Clarke, Jamie Wilson, Jim Hutchinson, Ramsey Faragher and Edward Cameron, representing the test service, local transport partnership, vehicle manufacturer, automation supplier and navigation community.

Hosted by Chris Smith

This Nature Podcast episode reports on a high-speed star whose orbit could enable measurement of the spin of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The programme also examines how exoskeletons influence human movement and covers other current science stories.

Luca Pellegrino and Gabriele Intermite discuss a light-responsive synthetic skin inspired by cephalopod camouflage and specialised polymers used in protective clothing. Leonardo Maccari interviews Ion Turcanu about digital twins for autonomous and remote driving, connecting materials research with an applied technology discussion.

Hosted by Luca Pellegrino, Gabriele Intermite

Dhruv Batra connects embodied AI research with browser agents at Yutori. He explains why navigation from pixels to actions links virtual robots and web interaction, then discusses reinforcement learning on live websites, simulation-to-reality gaps and teleoperation. The conversation also examines competing views of intelligence, claims about scaling and the implications of agent-mediated browsing for the web. Hosted by Ravid Shwartz Ziv and Allen Roush. Watch the full conversation on the publisher’s YouTube channel.

Hosted by Ravid Shwartz Ziv, Allen Roush

Jason Rodriguez discusses piloting remotely operated vehicles on scientific expeditions, including technical problem-solving, mid-water observations and collaboration with researchers. He describes a career moving from aviation electronics through offshore work into ocean science. The full episode also includes research updates from Alan Jamieson and Thom Linley. This listing uses the full episode and its publisher-page date, rather than the separately released PRESSURISED edit.

Hosted by Alan Jamieson, Thom Linley

Nikita Rudin discusses reinforcement learning for robot locomotion and the difficulties of transferring policies from simulation to physical robots. Topics include visual inputs, real-world data for improving simulators, imitation learning and teleoperation, hierarchical control, and trade-offs between modular and end-to-end approaches for autonomous robots.

Hosted by Sam Charrington

Jack Parker-Holder and Shlomi Fruchter explain Genie 3's interactive world-generation capabilities. They discuss architecture, real-time environments, visual memory and promptable events, trace the project's development, and consider how generated worlds could train embodied agents and guide future research on world models.

Hosted by Sam Charrington

Fatih Porikli discusses distillation techniques for efficient multimodal systems, including autonomous-driving scene understanding and planning, and sharper monocular depth estimation. The episode also reviews on-device demonstrations of 3D and video generation and visual question answering, connecting transformer and diffusion research with resource-constrained deployment.

Hosted by Sam Charrington

Paul Middlebrooks and Patryk Laurent examine how principles drawn from brains could help artificial intelligence learn from the real world. Laurent connects experience in neuroscience and AI with questions about perception, action, prediction and generalization. The conversation considers learning from continuous video, what embodied robotic systems reveal about intelligence, the relationship between language models and other forms of learning, and which biological details may matter when developing more capable AI.

Hosted by Paul Middlebrooks

Heinrich Jaeger explains how granular jamming can turn a soft bag of particles into a rigid gripper capable of grasping objects with different shapes. The discussion connects the physics of interacting grains with the design of compliant robots and a universal gripper developed by an interdisciplinary research team. Andrzej Grzesiak then describes a bio-inspired manipulator developed with Festo: additive manufacturing, an elephant-trunk-like arm and a fish-fin-inspired gripping mechanism provide alternatives to conventional rigid industrial manipulators.