In this episode of ODSC’s Ai X Podcast, we are joined by Francis Govers, a contributor to the design of over 30 manned and unmanned land, sea, air, and space vehicles, and an expert in robotics and autonomy. 

Francis is an Air Force veteran, spent 10 years at NASA, was a lead engineer for the International Space Station, was Deputy Chief Engineer for the US Army Future Combat Systems, participated in the DARPA Grand Challenge, and managed a Zeppelin airship. He worked on the "Yellow Line" for football and designed telemetry systems for NASCAR and IndyCar. He designed RAMSEE, the robot security guard, as CTO of Gamma 2 Robotics. As a commercial pilot, writer, artist, musician, engineer, race car nut, and designer, Francis has a serious addiction to building things that frequently get him into trouble. 

He has published 48 magazine articles and contributed to five books. He received five outstanding achievement awards from NASA, the Explorer Award by the National Space Society, recognition from Scientific American for “World Changing Ideas”, and was recognized by the Vertical Flight Society as a "Titan of Autonomy". 

SHOW TOPICS:

- The second edition of “Artificial Intelligence for Robotics” which came out in February

- Tell us about your background and key career moments

- Tell us about your book - what’s the motivation and audience?

- The growing industry of robotics startups and their appeal to investors

- What is the fundamental difference between an AI-enabled robot and a traditional robot?

- How does autonomy differ from pre-programmed robotic behaviors?

- Why is supervised learning important in AI robotics, and how is it used in this book?

- You show the reader how to build a robot in your book. What are the primary technical components (hardware and software) needed to build an AI robot?

- Tell us about Robotic Operating Systems aka ROS

- How can deep learning be used for robotics and is transfer learning applicable?

- How can we teach a robot to listen and what are the main challenges in developing a robot capable of understanding human speech?

- What is Spectral Analysis?

- Beyond just listening, how do we give a robot a personality, known as artificial personality (AP)?

- What is the purpose of Monte Carlo modeling in creating human-like interactions for the robot?

- How does the robot’s personality system enable it to hold simple conversations with children?

- Why is it important for the robot to understand the mood of its human user during interactions?

- How do robots traditionally navigate unstructured envoirnments and what new methods does AI introduce?

SHOW  NOTES:

Francis Govers: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisxgoversiii/ 

Artificial Intelligence for Robotics: https://www.packtpub.com/en-us/product/artificial-intelligence-for-robotics-9781788835442 

NASA Space Station: https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/ 

Q-Learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-learning 

YOLOv8: https://yolov8.com/ 

Darpa Grand Challenge: https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/-grand-challenge-for-autonomous-vehicles 

Darpa Grand Challenge Documentary: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/ 

Genetic Algorithms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm 

Podcast Episode: Automated Prompt Engineering: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/2EqtUzJvOMb 

Podcast Episode: Reinforcement Learning for Finance: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ai-x-podcast/episodes/Reinforcement-Learning-for-Finance-with-Dr--Yves-J--Hilpisch-e2oh28t  

NVIDIA Jetson Nano: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded-systems/jetson-nano/product-development/ 

Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA): https://www.dsp.dla.mil/Programs/MOSA/ 

Transfer learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_learning 

Text to Speech: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_to_speech 

Spectral Analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_analysis 

I'm OK – You're OK: ​​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_OK_%E2%80%93_You%27re_OK 

Prometheus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(2012_film) 

Ex Machina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_Machina 

This episode was sponsored by:  

Ai+ Training ⁠https://aiplus.training/⁠ 

Home to 600+ hours of on-demand, self-paced AI training, live virtual training, and certifications in in-demand skills like LLMs and prompt engineering.

And created in partnership with ODSC ⁠https://odsc.com/⁠ 

The Leading AI Training Conference, featuring expert-led, hands-on workshops, training sessions, and talks on cutting-edge AI topics and tools, from data science and machine learning to generative AI to LLMOps

Join us at our upcoming and highly anticipated conference ODSC West in South San Francisco October 29-31.