Hardware Podcasts

Episode 130: Robots learning from humans - Chad Jenkins

Robot Talk · 24 Oct 2025 · 29m · Episode 130

What this episode covers

Chad Jenkins, a Professor of Robotics at the University of Michigan, discusses his lab's work on teaching robots through demonstration rather than coding, focusing on dexterous mobile manipulation and perception. He explains the challenge of 'affordances'—understanding how objects can be used—and the trade-off between the speed of deep learning models and the robustness of search-based algorithms. Jenkins also highlights his 'distributed teaching collaboratives' initiative, which uses open-source course materials to scale robotics education, supported by funding from the Sloan Foundation, Amazon, and Toyota Research Institute.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
University of Michigan, NVIDIA, Meta, Figure AI, Sloan Foundation, Amazon, Toyota Research Institute

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