In Robots Podcast episode #95 David Lane, Professor of Autonomous Systems Engineering and affiliated with the Heriot-Watt University Ocean Systems Laboratory (Edinburgh), talks with interviewer Per Sjoborg about his journey from research to business and back. He tells about how he got started first in offshore work then in robotics research, developing control software for autonomous underwater vehicles. He also tells how frustration with the lack of utilization of his work led he and his associates to start the company SeeByte, to commercialize it, and how having the U.S. Navy as their first customer proved very helpful towards the company's success. (Dr. Lane has much to say about the value of customer funding and customer focus for a startup.) Finally, he tells about his return to academia after finding the right person to take over the day-to-day details of running SeeByte, and how his experience in industry finds its way into his academic work.
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