Since May 2007, my colleagues at the Robots Podcast and at Robohub and I have been working with robots.net to bring you the latest news and views on robotics. For the past 4 years, much of robots.net's reporting has been by John Payne (or John_RobotsPodcast, as most of you will know him). With John leaving his post(ing), and Robohub coming into its own, it's now time to consolidate these efforts. I'd like to thank John for his incredibly dependable and insightful reporting throughout the years, and Steve for giving me the opportunity to join this community and take my first tentative steps as a blogger under his expert guidance many years ago! To continue to receive your robotics news, join us at http://robohub.org or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or via RSS (podcast only)/RSS (all Robohub news).

In episode #178, interviewer Audrow Nash speaks with Christina Brester, currently a PhD student in Computer Science and Engineering at the Siberian State Aerospace University (SibSAU) in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. For her Master's thesis, Ms. Brester collaborated with a team of other scientists to investigate machine recognition of human emotion based on speech, using an evolutionary multiobjective genetic algorithm, an approach which proved to be far more successful than prior methods. Her ongoing research interests include evolutionary computation, neuro-evolutionary algorithms, machine learning, and speech analysis.

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In episode 177, interviewer Audrow Nash speaks with Kurosh Madani, Chair Professor in Electrical Engineering, Senart-FB Institute of Technology, and co-founder of the Images, Signals, and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (LISSI), Univeristy Paris-EST Créteil (UPEC). They discuss neural networks and their potential applications.

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In episode #176, Audrow Nash interviews Christoph Stiller from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Dr. Stiller speaks about the utility of various types of sensors in enabling autonomous vehicle operation, as well as the ethics of autonomous cars, and his experience in the DARPA Grand Challenge. Dr. Stiller is the most recent past president of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society, and currently serves as Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems and the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine. His automated driving team AnnieWAY reached the finals in the DARPA Urban Challenge 2007 and won the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge in 2011.

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In episode #175, Audrow Nash interviews Professor Riccardo Cassinis from the University of Brescia in Italy about using robotics in education. Cassinis speaks about having young people, from primary school through university, access and control real robots remotely, in preference to simulations, to learn subjects such as programming, geography, and foreign languages. Currently at the University of Brescia, Cassinis is the Director of the Advanced Robotics Laboratory and an Associate Professor of Advanced Computer Programming and of Robotics.

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In episode #174, Audrow Nash speaks with Hunter Lloyd, a Professor of Robotics at Montana State University. Hunter, who interrupted his college education to tour as a comedian for six years, performs a comedy act for all ages with partner Looney, a NAO Humanoid Robot from Aldebaran Robotics. Lloyd discusses making people laugh with his robot partner, why he does it, and how what he’s learned as a comedian relates to robotics.

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In episode #173, interviewer Ron Vanderkley speaks with Will Jackson, founder and Director of Engineered Arts Limited. With a background in design and animatronics, Jackson founded Engineered Arts in 2004 to produce mixed media installations for UK science centres and museums. In 2005, the company began work on the Mechanical Theatre for the Eden Project, which led to the design and construction of the original RoboThespian model.

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