Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry PhD-turned successful business leader, regarding the commercialization and challenges of bringing technological inventions to market. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The interviewee is Dr Tessa Lau, an experienced entrepreneur with expertise in AI, machine learning, and robotics, who thrives on the challenges of creating startups. She is currently Founder/CEO at Dusty Robotics, whose mission is to address construction industry productivity by introducing robotic automation on the jobsite. In this interview, Lau discusses her technical and business insights from the startups she built.

Findings

Dr Lau received her BA and BS from Cornell University in computer science and applied & engineering physics; and an MS and PhD degree in computer science from University of Washington. Prior to co-founding Dusty in April 2018, she was CTO/co-founder at Savioke, where she orchestrated the deployment of 75+ delivery robots into hotels and high-rises. Previously, Lau was a research scientist at Willow Garage, where she developed simple interfaces for personal robots. She also spent 11 years at IBM Research working in business process automation and knowledge capture.

Originality/value

Dr Lau, known as the Chief Robot Whisperer, is a robot industry disruptor who is passionate about pioneering technology that gives people super-powers. Lau has built two businesses, large, successful venture capital-funded companies. Lau was named 2017 Woman of Influence by The Silicon Valley Business Journal and one of the most creative business people by Fast Company in 2015. Over the years, Lau has served on program committees for various major HCI and AI conferences and on the board for the CRA-W – the committee for the status of women in computing research.

中文翻译：

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Pransky访谈：Dusty Robotics创始人兼首席执行官Tessa Lau博士

目的

本文的目的是提供由《工业机器人杂志》的乔安妮·普兰斯基（Joanne Pransky）进行的“问答采访”，作为一种方法，以传授由著名的机器人行业博士转变为成功的商业领袖的商业化方面的综合技术，业务和个人经验以及将技术发明推向市场的挑战。本文旨在讨论这些问题。

设计/方法/方法

受访者是Tessa Lau博士，他是一位在AI，机器学习和机器人领域具有专业知识的经验丰富的企业家，他在创建初创企业的挑战中蒸蒸日上。她目前是Dusty Robotics的创始人/首席执行官，其使命是通过在工作现场引入机器人自动化来解决建筑行业的生产力。在这次采访中，Lau讨论了自己创建的初创公司在技术和业务方面的见解。

发现

Lau博士获得了康奈尔大学的计算机科学与应用工程物理学士学位和理学学士学位；并获得华盛顿大学的计算机科学硕士学位和博士学位。在2018年4月与他人共同创立Dusty之前，她是Savioke的CTO /联合创始人，在那里她策划了将75多个送货机器人部署到酒店和高层建筑中的工作。此前，Lau是Willow Garage的研究科学家，在那里她为个人机器人开发了简单的界面。她还在IBM Research工作了11年，从事业务流程自动化和知识获取。

创意/价值

刘博士被称为首席机器人低语者，是机器人行业的颠覆者，他热衷于为人们提供超能力的先锋技术。Lau建立了两家企业，大型的，成功的由风险投资资助的公司。Lau被《硅谷商业杂志》评为2017年“影响力女性”，并被Fast Company评为2015年最具创造力的商人之一。多年来，Lau曾在各种主要的HCI和AI会议的程序委员会中担任董事会成员， CRA-W –计算机研究中妇女地位委员会。