Boris Sofman is the Senior Director Of Engineering and Head of Trucking at Waymo, formerly the Google Self-Driving Car project. He was also the CEO and co-founder of Anki, a home robotics company. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:

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EPISODE LINKS:

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Boris’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bsofman (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bsofman)

Waymo’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/waymo (https://twitter.com/waymo)

Waymo’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/waymo (https://www.youtube.com/waymo)

Waymo’s Website: https://waymo.com/ (https://waymo.com/)

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OUTLINE:

Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

(00:00) – Introduction

(07:32) – Robots in science fiction

(13:13) – Cozmo

(38:28) – AI companions

(45:23) – Anki

(1:10:56) – Waymo Via

(1:42:34) – Sensor suites for long haul trucking

(1:52:30) – Machine learning

(2:10:26) – Waymo vs Tesla

(2:21:02) – Safety and risk management

(2:30:06) – Societal effects of automation

(2:41:11) – Amazon Astro

(2:45:35) – Challenges of the robotics industry

(2:50:03) – Humanoid robotics

(2:57:06) – Advice for getting a PhD in robotics

(3:04:37) – Advice for robotics startups

(3:15:43) – Advice for students