Show Notes
Mike Oitzman and Gene Demaitre recap their recent trip to attend the Manifest tradeshow in Las Vegas. The show features vignettes from the show floor with executives from many of the industries most innovative warehouse and supply chain robotics companies.
Show timeline 8:12 - Zoox autonomous taxi trip recap 6:20 - News of the week 14:33 - Manifest Recap with Gene Demaitre and Mike Oitzman 34:08 - Interview with Sankalp Arora, CEO, Gather AI 41:58 - Interview with Ben Gruettner, Chief Revenue Officer, Robust.AI 49:28 - Interview with Owen Nicholson, CEO, Slamcore 54:21 - Interview with Mason Cole, VP Sales, Slip Robotics 1:00:55 - Interview with Steven McKinley (COO) and Jim Leifer (CEO) with Ambi Robotics 1:10:00 - Interview with Jackie Wu, CEO, from Corvus Robotics 1:16:40 - Interview with Kevin Damoa, founder and CEO Glid Technologies 1:22:37 - Interview with Eric Miller, cofounder and CEO of Autopallet ### – SPONSOR – Download the 2026 State of the Robotics Industry Report: https://www.therobotreport.com/state-of-robotics-industry-report-2026/
More from The Robot Report Podcast
Ben Waters, CEO of Wibotic, joins Mike Oitzman and Gene Demaitre to discuss how wireless charging is evolving for larger, more autonomous robotics fleets.
Janine Sinanan-Singh, Director of Gen AI Research at Appen, joins Mike Oitzman and Gene Demaitre to discuss the data, evaluation, and human oversight needed to advance robotics and agentic AI. They explore how video and egocentric data can support robot training, why latency and generalization remain difficult, and where human judgment still matters. Janine describes Appen’s evolution from speech and linguistics into supporting generative AI, multimodal systems, agents, and robotics with expert data. The conversation examines what humanoid robot demos do—and don’t—show, how synthetic data can help teams scale, and what it takes to evaluate systems beyond the lab.
The interview this week explores the European robotics market with OMRON’s Miguel Garces Moreno, covering growth in collaborative robots and AMRs, shifting demand toward sectors such as pharma, and the impact of labor shortages and supply-chain pressures.
Sai Vemprala, CTO of General Robotics, talks about why robotics still faces a major gap between research and real-world deployment—and how the company’s Grid platform aims to close it.
Teddy Haggerty is the founder and CEO of Robostore and Robo Inc., where he has helped push robotics into education, enterprise pilots, and early commercial deployments. His perspective is shaped by years of building in drones, crypto infrastructure, manufacturing, and import-export before turning his focus to robots.