Category: Champion

Champion Award: Companies or individuals who are global champions for good robots and good robotics.

Louise Poubel wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Louise Poubel | Software Engineering Supervisor, Ignition Technical Lead at Open Robotics Louise Poubel is a software engineering supervisor at Open Robotics. The foundation’s mission is to support the development, distribution, and adoption of open software and hardware for use in robotics research, education, and product development. She is building on her work with Gazebo, […]

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Robohub wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Robohub President: Sabine Haeurt           Founded: 2012 HQ:  Switzerland Robohub is an online platform and non-profit that brings together leading communicators in robotics research, start-ups, business, and education from around the world, focused on connecting the robotics community to the public. It can be difficult for the public to find free, high-quality information about robotics. At […]

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Mark Martin wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Mark Martin | Bay Area Regional Director for Advanced Manufacturing Workforce Development for California Community Colleges Mark Martin is the Bay Area Regional Director for Advanced Manufacturing Workforce Development for California Community Colleges, and is based at Laney College in Oakland, CA. His work is to build upon the region’s community college manufacturing programs to […]

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NASA IRG wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

NASA Intelligent Robotics Group   Group Lead: Maria Bualat  Deputy Group Lead: Matthew Deans   Chief Roboticist: Terry Fong                      Founded: 1990             HQ: Moffett Field, CA   Since 1990, the NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) has been developing robotics technology to reinvent planetary exploration and to create […]

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Frank Tobe wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Frank Tobe | Founding Editor of The Robot Report Frank Tobe is the Founding Editor and Publisher of The Robot Report which he launched in 2008 and sold to WTWH Media in 2017. He is also the co-founder of ROBO-Global, a robotics and automation exchange-traded fund (ETF), and developed a tracking index for the robotics […]

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Rumman Chowdhury wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Rumman Chowdhury | CEO and Founder of Parity Rumman Chowdhury’s passion lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and humanity. She is a pioneer in the field of applied algorithmic ethics, working with C-suite clients to create cutting-edge technical solutions for ethical, explainable and transparent AI since 2017. Formerly Global Lead for Responsible AI at […]

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Alex Padilla wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Alex Padilla | California Secretary of State Alex Padilla was sworn in as California Secretary of State on January 5, 2015. He is committed to modernizing the office, increasing voter registration and participation, and strengthening voting rights. Padilla’s parents emigrated from Mexico and raised their family in the working class community of Pacoima, California.  His […]

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PickNik Robotics wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Picknik Robotics Founders: Dave Coleman, Andy McEvoy, Mike Lautman, Rob Coleman, Mi Founded: 2015 HQ:  Boulder, CO   PickNik Robotics is a leading advocate of creating advanced robotic applications for startups and corporations all over the world. They lead the development of the open source MoveIt framework and its community, which has had a huge […]

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Open Robotics wins Champion Awards in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Open Robotics Founders: Brian Gerkey, John Hsu, Morgan Quigley, Nate Koenig, Steffi Paepcke Founded: 2012    HQ:  Mountain View, CA Open Robotics, along with the broader ROS community, have been working for over a decade to build free and open source tools and applications to advance the field of robotics. Working with our global community, we […]

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Katherine Scott wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Katherine Scott | Developer Advocate at Open Robotics Katherine Scott is a software engineer specializing in robotics and computer vision. Scott is currently the Developer Advocate at Open Robotics, the maintainers of ROS and Ignition Gazebo, and sits on the board of the Open Source Hardware Association. She was Cofounder and Software Lead at Tempo […]

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SICK wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robots’ Industry Awards

SICK  USA CEO: Tony Peet                  Founded: 1946              HQ:  Minneapolis, MN Silicon Valley Robotics member since 2017, SICK has actively supported the California robotics industry. SICK works with robot OEM’s to tune SICK’s LiDAR technology to the emerging AMR market  with the TiM family of small LiDAR’s ( and safety versions). SICK has been active in […]

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Timnit Gebru wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Timnit Gebru | AI Ethics Researcher I am currently a research scientist at Google in the ethical AI team. Timnit Gebru’s recent dismissal from Google over what looks like research censorship, or at the very least a refusal to discuss issues, has sent shockwaves through the AI, ML, robotics and ethics communities. Timnit Gebru was […]

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Willow Garage wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Willow Garage  Founder: Scott Hassan                Founded: 2006            HQ: Menlo Park, CA       History shows that one single semiconductor company Fairchild created a large part of the wealth of Silicon Valley. This award goes to Willow Garage, one small group with big dreams that started the current robot revolution. Sadly, Willow Garage operated […]

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Henrik Christensen wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Henrik Christensen | Director of Robotics, Distinguished Professor at UC San Diego and co-founder of ROBO-global & Robust.AI Henrik Christensen is currently Co-Founder of Robust.ai, one of the 2020 SVR Industry Awardees. As well as being the Qualcomm Chancellor’s Chair in Robot Systems and the Director of the Contextual Robotics Institute at the University of […]

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Joy Buolamwini wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Joy Buolamwini | Algorithmic Bias Researcher, Poet of Code, Founder of the Algorithmic Justice League  Joy Buolamwini uses art and research to illuminate the social implications of artificial intelligence. She founded the Algorithmic Justice League to create a world with more equitable and accountable technology. Her TED Featured Talk on algorithmic bias has over 1 […]

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Ayanna Howard wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Ayanna Howard | Chair of the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech    “I believe that every engineer has a responsibility to make the world a better place. We are gifted with an amazing power to take people’s wishes and make them a reality.” – Dr. Howard (Video) Ayanna Howard is an American roboticist […]

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Evan Ackerman wins Champion Award in SVR ‘Good Robot’ Industry Awards

Evan Ackerman | Contributing Editor at IEEE Spectrum Evan Ackerman has been writing about science, robots, and emerging technology for over 10 years. After co-founding his own robotics blog in 2007, he began contributing to IEEE Spectrum in 2011. In addition to Spectrum, Ackerman’s work has appeared in a variety of other websites and magazines […]

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Meet the robotics community champions in the SVR Good Robot Industry Awards

If robotics is the technology of the 21st century, rather than biotech, then we have some serious work to do. This week marks the ‘beginning of the end’ of the coronavirus pandemic as a vaccine is deployed in the US. The Wall St Journal recently profiled the incredible effort of Pfizer and BioNTech who pioneered […]

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