An Interview with Gerry Roston

The Amp Hour · 4 Feb 2017 · 1h 19m · Episode 334

What this episode covers

Gerry Roston, CEO of Savionics and Executive in Residence at TechTown Detroit, discusses his career from JPL robotics to industrial IoT. He details building the 'Robbie' prototype for the Mars Sojourner rover, using PDP-11 and VAX computers, and later autonomous vehicles at CMU. At Savionics, he explains deploying wireless sensor nodes to monitor stamping machines, avoiding PLC integration to mitigate security risks, and using customer discovery to pivot from energy monitoring to predictive maintenance.

Mentioned

Companies
Savionics, TechTown Detroit, Jet Propulsion Lab, Wind River Systems, Carnegie Mellon University
Products
Puma 560, NavLab
Chips
PDP-11, VAX
Also
VXWorks, Zigbee, 3G, Wi-Fi

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • IoT For All Podcast · 19m

    Industrial IoT and Connectivity | Simply Embedded's Chris Karaplis | Internet of Things Podcast

    Chris Karaplis, founder and CEO of Simply Embedded, discusses the shift in industrial IoT from consumer-focused applications to complex B2B environments like mining, energy, and manufacturing. He explains how his company helps clients transition from wired to wireless systems, highlighting the importance of bidirectional communication for fleet management and remote diagnostics. Karaplis addresses the barriers to adoption, including past failures and cost concerns, by demonstrating long-term ROI through reduced labor costs and improved operational efficiency. He also outlines Simply Embedded's upcoming products, Field Site and Fleet Scan, which enable wireless connectivity for legacy industrial equipment.

  • The Robot Report Podcast · 1h 05m

    Brian Gerkey from Open Robotics discusses the development of ROS

    Brian Gerkey, CEO and co-founder of Open Robotics, discusses the 13-year evolution of the Robot Operating System (ROS) from its origins at Willow Garage to its current status as an industry standard. He details the architectural shift from ROS 1 to ROS 2, emphasizing the addition of security, real-time capabilities, and certification readiness for mission-critical applications in automotive and aerospace sectors. Gerkey also explains Open Robotics' business model of funding open-source development through customer R&D contracts and highlights new initiatives like FogROS for cloud offloading and Open RMF for multi-vendor robot interoperability.

  • Manufacturing Happy Hour · 38m

    Taking the Entrepreneurial Leap with Joe Carson

    Joe Carson, founder of Pacific Blue Engineering, a Long Beach-based control systems integrator, discusses his transition from Rockwell Automation to starting his own company to avoid living with regret. He explains how Pacific Blue Engineering differentiates itself through strong team culture, heavy investment in technical training, and personal development strategies like those taught by Tony Robbins. The episode highlights their focus on migrating legacy PLCs to modern, connected automation systems, citing a specific project where text-based fault alerts reduced downtime for a life sciences customer. Carson also details the company's recent expansion into Northern California to guarantee 24-hour on-site engineer response across the state.

  • Over the Air · 27m

    Proof of Value (PoV) with Paul Glynn, CEO of Davra

    Paul Glynn, CEO of Davra, argues that most IoT projects fail because they focus on technical proof of concept rather than 'proof of value,' emphasizing that business outcomes matter more than connectivity. He illustrates this with a case study of an automotive client where predictive maintenance models were integrated into Cisco WebEx to ensure operational accountability and reduce downtime. Glynn also contrasts the historical struggles of Commodore and BlackBerry with modern IoT, noting that technology is rarely the barrier, but rather the translation of data into actionable business intelligence. He highlights partners like Onset Computing for reliable sensors and predicts that video analytics will become the dominant form of IoT data collection.

  • Over the Air · 30m

    The OG of IoT: A Chat w/ Rob Tiffany (Part 1)

    Rob Tiffany, VP & IoT Intrapreneur at Ericsson and former executive at Microsoft and Hitachi, discusses the evolution of IoT from the 1990s to the present. He details his early work at Real Time Data monitoring vending machines, the strategic failures of Windows Mobile against Apple and Android, and the economic realities of consumer IoT. Tiffany argues that industrial IoT's true value lies in moving operations from 'guessing' to 'knowing' through predictive maintenance and automation, while warning of the workforce disruption caused by accelerating technological change.

The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by The Amp Hour. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.