Podcasts›Human Stories Behind the Robot›From Bold Ideas to Real-World ImpactLike💬 Be the first to comment →AudioSeptember 17, 2026From Bold Ideas to Real-World ImpactFrom Human Stories Behind the Robot, hosted by John OyekanProf Sabine Hauert on rejection, persistence, and robotics research aimed at wildfires, the environment, and cancer treatment.Play episodeSaveOpen the audio file TranscriptTranscript from the show's feedSearch the transcript0:07Hello and welcome to Human Stories Behind Robots, a podcast from the UK RAS network exploring the people behind robotics research and innovation. In this series, we'll be speaking with researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and innovators from across the robotics community to uncover the personal stories behind their careers. We will explore the moments that inspire them, the challenges they have overcome, the lessons they have learned, and the experiences that have shaped who they are today.0:43Because behind every breakthrough, behind every innovation and every robot, there is a human story. I'm your host, John Oyeko. Let's get started. Sabine is a professor of swarm engineering at the University of Bristol in the UK. Her research focuses on making swarms for people and across scales from nanorobots for cancer treatment all the way to larger robots for environmental monitoring and logistics.1:24She's profoundly cross-disciplinary and she works between engineering mathematics, the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, and Lab Sciences. Before joining the University of Bristol, Sabine engineered swarms of nanoparticles for cancer treatment at MIT and deployed swarms of flying robots at EPFL. As an expert in science communication with 10 years of experience, Sabine is often invited to discuss the future of robotics and AI, including in the journal Nature, at the European Parliament, and the Royal Society.2:03Her work has been featured in mainstream media, including the BBC, CNN, The Guardian, The Economist, Wired and New Scientist. She has also served on national and international communities, including the Robotics Growth Partnership, the Royal Society Working Group on Machine Learning, and Data Community of Interest, as well as several IEEE RAS boards. She's currently on the board of directors for the Open Source Robotics Foundation.2:36Hello Sabine. It's good to have you on our podcast, The Human Stories Behind the Robots. Welcome. Hi John, it's great to be on the show. Thanks so much. Thank you for calling for for coming on this chat. I know that you're you're a very busy busy person. so you won't believe this, Sabine. I I first met you in 2010 in Alaska, and we both attended the Accra, Accra 2010, and I remember standing by your poster on deploying UAV Swarms for I think that was on maintaining communications between between them, and you were standing with Dario Dario Florino, our star struck, should I say, between all these great guys in robotics.3:23So and I have a question on those later on, but the first question I wanted to ask you is could you tell us what got you into this field and what your motivations were? First of all, that's amazing that we met at Anchorage in Alaska at that time. And I think it's it's quite beautiful, these conferences where you meet the same people year after year after year, and then you become friends over all these years as we continue to develop the field of robotics. Yeah. And I was actually recently in Alaska again this summer, so I'm happy to tell you more about that later for the finals of XPRIZE.3:54Also doing swarms of drones, but this time in the real world rather than in the research world. So it's come full cycle. It's come full cycle, it has. So I can tell you more about that. But how did I get started? Well, Dario Floriano, it's good that you mention him. I was a student in computer science at EPFL in Switzerland, and he was teaching a class on bio-inspired artificial intelligence, which had, you know, artificial evolution, swarms, lots of different areas. They were really exciting, lots of hands-on exercises that were fun to do.4:24And at that time I had a chance to do a master's year abroad. So I applied to go to Carnegie Mellon, which is well known for robotics, and I spent my year over there playing robot football with Manuela Veloso's football team. at that time they were little robot dogs, little eyebows. And so we had these little robot dogs going around kicking footballs, and I was in charge of calibrating them, and I thought that was the best thing ever. But again, this combination of robots that work together, plus everything I'd learned in bio-inspired AI, I thought I'm gonna do research.4:57I'm gonna do swarms of some type where robots work together. and so that's really how I got into the field, into the field of robotics. And then after that year abroad at Carnegie Mellon, I came back to EPFL to do a PhD with Dario Floriano. and he had funding to do these swarms of flying robots to create communication networks and disaster scenarios, and that's that's really how how it all started. So a mix of of being super excited about the robots. At that time, I thought it was pure research, like no applications in the near term.5:31But you know, 10 years later you realize, oh, there's lots of businesses spinning out of these drones, and then you realize all these things that seem futuristic, they take 10 years and then they become a real thing. And so we have this beauty of doing both. Yeah, it's quite amazing you said that because I too, I mean, I'm in Swarm Robotics. I did my PhD in Swarm Robotics as well. And I remember as well, and I used to make my supervisor was Professor Hu Sheng Hu, and he was very active in the robots in the robot dods and football scene.6:03So I I think it won a couple of the competitions actually. Yeah, excellent. And so yeah, so then when we were working on on Swan robots and and UAVs. Well, Swan UAVs using it for disaster response. That was my research topic. During that time we were doing it mostly in simulations, we better physical robots, but now it's become a thing. I remember also working on the unman area vehicles, you know, the low-level autonomous controls for on many area vehicles, and now it's it's all everywhere.6:36So it's quite interesting how research sort of matures up to this, you know, over years and up to the point we are in. And what I find quite interesting in what you said, there, and I'm going to pick on that. You said it has come full cycle. So tell us about the X-PRIZE you're involved in in Alaska. Yeah, we were in Alaska as one of the three finalists in the XPRIZE Wildfire competition. And the goal of the competition is to find a wildfire within 1,000 square kilometers within 10 minutes after ignition and extinguish it.7:11So huge scale where you need a swarm. There's no way you can do that without a swarm. and then you need to be able to find that fire, get there fast, extinguish it, and then retrieve your drones. so we've been working on this general area of swarms of drones for wildfire fighting for I'd say six, six, seven years now, and on XPRIZE, maybe for for three, something like that. so it was, it was it was really cool actually to reach this final point where there was just three teams and we're having to go in a real environment where they're letting us try these these solutions.7:45In the end, what we came up with is we partnered with a team called Fire Foresight in Australia, and they had these long-range detection systems. So they had a sensor that could see very far and that used AI to detect things like smoke. And so they would tell us broadly where the fire was. And then we had installed nests of drones throughout like huge, huge distances, and each one of these nests had a number of drones that could one would pop up when a fire was detected and go check that it was a fire and that it wasn't a barbecue and do clever stuff using image recognition and AI.8:18And then if that was good, it would tell the other drones to pop up, and they were all carrying water balloons with little extinguishing payloads, and so they would they would like queue up by the fire and then drop their water balloons on the fire. And so it was honestly the team spent weeks of sleepless nights because you think you know how you're going to do it, but then reality hits, like all the stuff we do in the lab. When you get into reality, you you need to integrate, you need to get all the stuff working in reality. There's all the the checks that need to happen, the regulation.8:49So all of that happened when the team were in Alaska. And the sun never sets in Alaska in the summer. So it was literally they worked, they worked all night. They were heroic. And in the end, we we delivered a really good demo at the VIP day. So we were really proud of what the team did. And I think it sort of shows sort of these crazy ideas we had of swarms, you know, doing useful stuff. Now they're kind of at the level where you could make a product out of it. It needs, it needs that boost, but the technology is there. We had these little button pressers that we designed with 3D printers that would press the button on the drone so they wouldn't use any energy and then they'd take off.9:24So it just feels that much closer to reality. And then people need to do startups and businesses that actually make it a reality from a from a commercial perspective. But but yeah, proud proud moment. The team did really did really well. Yeah, that's amazing because there's a journey there, and actually 16 years ago, I know, 16. I started saying I was doing my PhD 20 years ago, which is kind of fine. So yeah, so when we started then, you know, it was a concept, an idea. And along the way, have you ever thought that why am I doing this thing, you know?9:57I'm only doing it in simulation, moving things about. When will I be able to make a real-world impact in the world? You know, what sustained you and what made you think that, you know, impact will come? I think I have no common sense. So I am oblivious to to the sense of that things are challenging and will take time. Yeah, yeah. so that that does give me hope just because I don't realize sometimes that how challenging things are, and so I go for them. But also what the reason I'm really excited now is that we can finally make robots at scale in a meaningful way.10:35We have a lot of the intelligence to coordinate them. it's also the next obvious step in my mind for robotics, because if you think of agriculture, logistics, huge environmental monitoring, construction, they're all problems of scale where a single one of these fancy robots that we see just won't cut it. Whereas a large number of robots interacting is what's needed, actually, for a lot of these large-scale applications. And so I think the time is just right where we've sort of we have cool robots that are working in lots of industries, and now we realize we need more robots to have a crack at these other applications.11:11But on top of that, these robots will operate in messy environments, right? They're not in factories, they're in environments that are messy, and that's where swarms shine because they're all built on the individual age intelligence of the agents and their ability to interact with humans, other robots, the task that they're trying to do. And so I think I think we're really at this sweet spot where swarms are starting to make sense as the solution for the next scale of what we need to do in robotics. of course it's sort of in these in these different applications that require that scale, but but I'm I'm hopeful that just because the robots are there, their intelligence, I think, is there, and we're starting to think about how we do those things.11:48Yeah, yeah, that's that's quite yeah, that's that's quite interesting. And and I'm I'm gonna ask a slightly controversial question, if you don't mind. So there is this situation whereby we tend to aim for you know short termism. We find X and we want to see the impact in three years, right? And there seems to be a number of moves towards that direction. However, the true science, as you and I can see, sometimes takes years, 16 years in this case, whereby all those lessons we've learned from swarm systems that you know when it an agent failed, the others can can come in and creating a resilient system and all that, all that knowledge from the swarm side of things is now helping us to tackle this large-scale, complex engineering problems.12:44What would you say about you know the that approach of so short time is in thinking in funding versus long term in in funding? Yeah, it is it is a balance. So I would say the the way we balance that in in the team currently is that is we do have future-facing projects. So we have three main projects which I would say are more more blue sky. One is on trustworthy swarms for large city-scale logistics. So again, thinking about that scale.13:14One is on swarm construction, but in a completely wacky way, like redesigning the way we do construction and building from the ground up. and so that's that's a different one. And the third one is about giving awareness to swarms so that they have this ability to understand and interact with each other. So those are all blue sky, and they will take time to see fruition. But in parallel to that, we have spin-outs and startups that are coming out that realize that a chunk of all this future stuff is actually ready to start deploying now, and that may maybe at some point the research progresses, sort of always at the forefront, and then you get that translation in the near term for the things that might be ready to be used.13:54And it doesn't have to be spin-outs, it could be collaboration with industry on on nuggets of that expertise that we have. And I think that's a that's a good balance. One one example is to follow up on this X Prize. We were all brainstorming this week. We're like, what are we doing next? Right now we've we've made it to the finals. And then I was thinking in in my team, one of my postdocs is is going to create a company and do do something that's more commercial aligned with that. And then I was with my PhD student, it was like, well, let's do 10,000 drones that can extinguish fires like a blanket.14:25So that is the future like blue sky thing that would take time to achieve. And by having both of those, you don't you somehow don't get bored ever. You always go for the blue sky thing. It is harder to find that funding, though, I agree. Like we are being pulled increasingly to the to the concrete. But somehow that blue skyness has pathways to concrete in the near term. So I kind of just need to figure out how to grasp them sometimes. Yeah. I think that's one of the advice to early career researchers, especially when you're building your first research ideas and your team and everything, you have these sort of two hearts.15:01One about what can I do in a short time, three three years that will deliver the impact, the credibility, and potentially the confidence for funders to give you funding for that short-term project, but also to give you the and to generate that confidence that they give you funding for the blue sky as well, because they can see that you know you have a path, you have a journey to to get to that blue sky. So there is will will that be correct in saying that that's something early careers should and researchers should think about?15:35I think they should should they should definitely try to do that. It's not always easy with the funding landscape. One thing that's also helped is that the long-term projects, the 10-year plans, they're usually three PhDs one after the other, right? And so PhDs, it depends on the students. Some students want to be applied and their goal is to get into industry, and it's important to follow that that ambition. But sometimes they're in it for the beauty of blue sky research. And so sometimes those are places where you have more flexibility to dream at that early stage.16:06And so those are projects where I I've had PhD students who do the really early blue sky and then a second PhD, and it becomes more applied by the third one. And so that gives you a journey as well, without having to write a whole proposal for a big grant and take that risk of a blue sky idea. Yeah, but it's interesting what you just said there about tailoring to the postdoc or PhD student. Can you tell us more about that and why you do that? So the UK is quite interesting because often students come to a PhD program or come with their own funding from from other countries.16:42And so that means they have a lot of flexibility in defining a project idea. When when I was in the US, our you know, our PIs would say what projects they wanted done, and then people would come and apply to those projects. Whereas in the UK, it's very student-driven. And so what usually ends up happening is the students come and for three months, we're like, wow, what do you want to do? What what are you interested in? What is how does this fit like your longer-term ambitions? And so you end up you end up shaping things with the student from the start. And I think that's I think that's actually really healthy because then you avoid this mismatch in what the student was hoping to do with what the PI really wanted to do.17:17It also means the PI needs to be flexible then, because they might have a pet project they're really excited and they can pitch it, right? And they can maybe the student is excited about it, but maybe they're excited about something else. So I think I think that's actually one of the strengths of the UK is that they they co-create a lot of projects. Also, very a lot of stuff is co-supervised, which was not common in the other places I went. And so you're always from the start thinking about what your other supervisor would like to, you know, would like to work on in parallel. So you end up with three people who have to come up with a cool project.17:49So that that's well that's that's quite interesting because that leads me to another question about the contrast between the UK and the US and other side of I mean and other parts of the world because you've worked in both geographical locations, the US and the UK, and you mentioned something there about the the PI in the US defining things, and students stuck on that, and in the UK we are more collaborative. So, and you've worked across this high-intensive research environment in the US, MIT, in Europe, EPFL, now in in the UK, Bristol, and so my question to you, how has that impacted your career across those different environments and how has that changed the way as well you tend to manage your team across those different geographical locations?18:43Yeah, I've been very lucky to be in in those great places at EPFL and MIT and to learn from really good supervisors. And I should say they do co-create, I'm sure, with their students. They don't just tell them to work on a specific project. but one person I really learned from was Radika Nagpal. She led the swarm team at Harvard, and I went to her lab every week, even though I wasn't officially in her lab just to get a robot fix, because I was doing nanomedicine at the time and I needed to get my bearings back in robots a little bit. And so she she warmly welcomed me and she had this thing called the swarm lunch, and she she told stories of how she met with her, you know, her students every week, and and it was just a really nurturing environment.19:22And her students did amazing work. Yeah. And and so when I joined Bristol, I created a swarm lunch. We still have swarm lunch running, except I don't have lunch paid for the students like Rodica had to have to fix this out. If we win X Prize, maybe we'll have free lunches every week. But so we have Swarm Lunch. I I do have in my schedule every week a meeting with with my team so that we can catch up. and so I try to take on board some some of that nurturing and trying to figure out what people want to do. What I love in the UK is how collaborative it is.19:54So in it at least in in Bristol, so the robot lab where we are in Bristol is a big, giant open space, so that gets you lots of opportunity to see what others are working on. So within robotics we can collaborate really nicely. But then we work with social scientists, with life sciences for Eng Bio. It's just very open. And part of the reason for that is is shared. Students are shared. It's like by design, you're meant to collaborate. And so it's quite efficient, and I think really good things come from that ability to collaborate. And then a lot of the hubs, UK-wide, are built on collaboration across institutions. So it's not even, you know, this institution versus this institution.20:27It's like, right, here's a hub call. Let's call all our mates at these other institutions and get together for a hub. So I think it creates a really nice collaborative community in the UK. And that's quite interesting. So collaboration in nurturing environments and being and I like in fact what you said about the nurturing because my experience is that if you care about the individual, the individual will produce. You don't have to worry about the, you know, it's the individual that is important. You you take care of the individual, you understand their needs, you make sure that you know they get what they need when they need it and will eventually produce good work.21:04I think you get ideas like that from everywhere you go. so Dario was amazing at at going for big visions and telling an wonderful story about that. And we learned a lot from him in doing that. and then Sangeita, where I did my my PhD at MIT, was like, you did swarms of robots? Sure, come and do nanomedicines. And sh she used to say, we always hire people who are good at whatever they do. It doesn't need to be my discipline, but they need to be good at whatever they do. And I and I learned a lot of how you also how you drive these cross-disciplinary teams. He had a really cool research team.21:36Brilliant. So one of the things we also look at on on this podcast, the human stories behind the robots, is looking at failures and successes. And that transformed us or got us to where we are today. And you've reached a very real career high with many highs to come in getting an OBE. So can you tell us can you tell our listeners what that is? And how has that impacted your career? Thanks. It was a a real honor to be awarded an honorary OB from His Majesty the King.22:10And I think it it's I don't see this as a person of the word. I see this very much as just work from the whole team, whether it's the Swarm team and researchers, but also a lot of the charities that that I work with on science communication or on open robotics. So like AI Hub Rubba Hub, Open Source Robotics Foundation, IEEE RAS, they're all charities who strive to make robotics more accessible to the broader public. And I think it it was nice because it's very often a conflict. You're doing science communication through these interviews, and very often you have to push the research, you have to push the impact.22:45But it matters so much that we tell the stories about what's happening in our fields because that's what what that's how we make the white robots if we're talking about it and listening, because we get we get feedback about it. And it also makes makes what we're working on just much more understandable and visible to the public so that we can have a meaningful debate about these technologies. But it's not always valued, that size. So it was nice to see that these things all do do matter. So you said you said two things, yeah. so you said it's not always valued by route and well now it's starting to.23:20I think it is starting to, but it it does take time. And so if if people are just looking at your number of publications, sometimes you might have less publications because you've prioritized doing something else. so I think I think it is actually getting becoming more and more valued. Hopefully this this demonstrates it. but it's not always obvious that that's the thing to do, and I think it's really important. Well, it's quite interesting you say that that you know communicating with people is is valuable. Like, you know, except you go out there and meet the public and you meet the people that you're gonna whose life you are trying to impact, you want to really understand what the problem is.23:58You will understand all the applications of research. So that's also needed. Communicating with public, engaging with potential stakeholders, all these things are necessary. And could I ask that for an early career researcher, and going back to your experience, how did you balance that? And how what advice will you give to early career researchers? We do we do training on on this at ICR and Iris, if anyone's around, very welcome to join.24:29My advice is to get started in small ways, in whichever way you're comfortable. So it could be that you're more of an observer, but you follow people on LinkedIn who are interesting in this field and you reinforce their message because you think they're valuable messages for the rest of the world or on Blue Sky or whatever social media it is. It could be that you're more comfortable communicating, but you just put out one thing every week, which is a picture of a robot from your lab. So I think it is very much about figuring out what you're comfortable with and what you can sustain.25:03So things like series are a good way to try and do things regularly. And doing things in a small way means you you become really good at those small things, and then you can move to the next to the next thing. I think the biggest barrier to a lot of this communication work is feeling that it's hard and feeling that you're not going to reach the people you need to reach, but then you can interact with people like you or or me to help help amplify that messaging, or losing steam. So you start and then you stop after a month, which actually I just had a break for three months because I just I just did not have time to do it.25:34So but because I had that in my mind, I'm supposed to be doing it every two weeks, and I'm back on it. So yeah, so I can do things that are small and sustainable and learn from them. Interesting. So you yeah, do things that are small and sustainable, but also have a frequency that you you put yourself. Yeah. And then my my question then is you mentioned there that it's becoming more valuable interacting with the public, but there's also that element of the publications because as early career researchers, even mid-career researchers and us as well, we're still still valued on, you know, what science did you do in the last year or what impact case studies, and you know, how how does the early career researcher balance it early in their career and how does it change as they build their team?26:21There's there's it's getting harder and harder to publish, I think, currently, just because there's so many people working in robotics and AI. But there's also more conferences that are that are popping up. So I think it's it's being a bit strategic sometimes. You can aim for a blue sky project, right, and have that as the story of your your PhD when you're in early career. But then there's smaller papers along the way that just keep things going and are and are feasible and manageable. I don't know that I have a good strategy, honestly.26:51I think it's very it's half strategy, half we know we should try and get a paper out of this. And so let's think of the thing that would be a paper at half keep going, because otherwise you don't reach the really fun stuff if you're constantly iterating, right? It's very hard. This is the biggest challenge we have in my team, is if you iterate, you have a better chance of papers, right? So you take a thing, you improve the algorithm, you have a new paper. It's the it's the best recipe if you want to publish. But that is not the funnest way to do research. And so sometimes we do go for blue sky, but those things end up taking, you know, two years or three years before they're actually ready to be a full story.27:29And then they take a little bit, they're a bit harder to publish because people have to be like, what is this thing? And then once they've processed that, and then sometimes it takes a few resubmissions, sometimes those win best paper awards. I I recently made a video about failure and like all the all the failures along the way. And they just take more tries, but you do get into good places further down the line. But it takes it takes thick skin. That's my answer to your question. Takes thick skin for early career. You just have to learn to let it roll. Yeah. Or take the pain a little bit and then go aga go again.28:00There's a strategy there, should I say an imagined strategy, even though it wasn't what you planned. Whereby you have this multiple incremental development, you submit that conferences that builds your, you know, prof I mean your publication pot, shall we say. And then you have the I mean, the more stretchy ones that you're going to join out bigger venues, and those take longer. And it's interesting what you said there that sometimes they don't get rejected because of the science. They get rejected because the mindset is still stuck in the old way.28:33And you need to persevere. And I I say that because I've I've experienced that myself. Whereby I I wrote a paper, you won't believe it took about eight years because the diffusion models came out, and then everybody said, Oh, that's possible. But you've been trying to push that, and everybody rejects it, not connecting the deducts. So how do you deal with that? How do you go on in situations where people don't catch on to the to the vision? So that's also why it ties into the whole science community.29:05A lot of this is storytelling. So I think what you realize is they don't they don't get it, but also probably you need you needed to improve how you told that story for people to understand why it was valuable and useful. Yeah, it does go full circle in that as well, is that it's just not often not enough to just say what what you did and hope hope that they get it. Because because that is it's a challenging thing to do, because they haven't been in in our head for three years coming up with this crazy, crazy idea. so a lot of it is storytelling, and and there's also there's usually really good feedback as well about what would make them comfortable with this idea, like extra experiments, doing doing you know, some extra things which which can be valuable to improve it.29:43Okay, so from 2010 to 2026, has your definition of success changes over over the decade and a half? I don't think so. I think you moved the goalpost. So I was telling these stories of of failures. So my that postdoc fellowship I got for MIT, before that there were six rejections, right? Six fellowship rejections, and then one one came through. same for a lot of things that I've done in my life where you just apply, you apply, you apply.30:14When I arrived as an early career in Bristol, I went to two ERC interviews, rejected. It was a nutty nanoswarm thing idea. And then I did a healthcare technology PSRC interview, rejected. I went for a huge hub, which somehow I ended up on the leadership of rejected. Like those were all rejected, like within within the first couple years of me arriving in Bristol. But then they all got funded in another in another mechanism. One became Horizon 2020 grants, one became my fellowship, my five-year fellowship that I have now in in a different form.30:52So they all they all happen at some point and and the failures become bigger and bigger, right? So my early postdoc fellowship failures were big, very, very big at the time, and they weren't many. and now they're big failures too, because usually I go for slightly more money, but then the successes do end up coming out of out of that at the at the end. So that's why I think they're very similar somehow. Just you you you move the goalposts of how much failure you can take in like the sheer size of it. And X Prize is gonna be similar to that, right?31:23It's they have decent prize pots. And I don't even think relatively to what the size of a thing is now. It's like one thing will fail, one thing will pass, and then you just do a number game. Well, it's interesting what you said about the failures and how you iterate them. So I think a lesson for early career researchers is that yes, you're gonna have failures, but learn from them, iterate, don't give up, look for other alternatives to to to submit. Yeah, and sometimes I give the idea away and then we split it into multiple, you know, PIs, and then we so yeah, it's it's yeah, creative reuse.31:59Creative things are like that. Of material. Yeah. It is it is always new, right? When we we submit, then they have to be new, but they're they have to be new. But they use you know, we you're in your researcher in an era and you care about a thing. And so it's pushing for that. Exactly. Okay, so women in academia often face incredible challenges, you know, in top of science communication, you do the teaching, the grant writing, supervising your students, and they face a lot of challenges in role in in the home, in life, outside work.32:31And this also includes child care and responsibilities and the wider societal expectations on top of all the pressure from from academia. So how was becoming a parent influenced your career? Yeah. I've had so I have two kids, a four-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl, which I had after I arrived in Bristol. I was lucky to have wonderful role models. Sangita and Redica were two women at the top of their, you know, game at MIT in Harvard, both both with kids. And so I had I had great role models, which I think helped helped a lot.33:06And I've had a wonderful husband who's been very supportive, is also an academic, so we have that you know ability to be flexible. How has it changed things? Well, I used to work all the time and I can't any in the same way, let's put it that way, anymore. and everything is structured around the kids' day now, so they come home. But because we have a flexible job often, except when you're teaching, obviously, you can't always be flexible. But that means we can usually pick them up one or the other at like 4 30, and then there's, you know, come home, and then and then we do pick up a bit of work in the evening to make up for our wacky schedule.33:44Yeah. but I think that flexibility has has helped a lot. Universities are, depending on where you are, quite welcoming. So my daughter comes to the lamb with me in the summer sometimes on Fridays, and the lamb, you know, people know her. We actually my swarm marina is this big whiteboard, and at Christmas she came with a friend and they doodled this giant Christmas tree, and we thought that's great, it'll be like the Christmas decoration for the entrance, and we can't take it off. So all our videos have like a background of a Christmas tree. So I think I think it's very much how did it change? I had to change schedules, embrace the chaos, because you can't predict what's going to happen a day or the other.34:19The other big thing that has changed, which I still really find challenging, is is travel. because I I do travel. and I used to travel more. It's probably better not to travel as much anyhow for the for the environment, but I now travel as little as I can, and every schedule is very optimized. So if I have to go somewhere, I will leave in the morning at 4 a.m. and come back as as soon as I can to avoid being away, because I don't like being away anymore. and so that's one of the biggest challenges is during COVID we sort of did a lot online, and that was really helpful for the, you know, for child caring and whatnot, although it's complicated for all sorts of other reasons.34:59But now we've moved back to all in person again for most things, even meetings. I don't understand why we need meetings in person. Like we do not need meetings in person for many things. And so that that is one of the biggest struggles I have not cracked yet. Yeah. But that's quite that's quite interesting because I like what you said about optimizing your your day, optimizing a meeting as well, because I meetings are not just should not just be meetings, they should have a goal out of it and in reason and ask yourself, this does it need to be in person, does it can it be online?35:31And and that's very important because you know when you have to travel into work, you have childcare, you have to balance it, you have to balance things up. And it's quite interesting there what you said about having role models to support your journey in, you know, what would be your advice, should I say, to an early career researcher who is a woman and who wants to be at the top of the field with just like you. Yeah. do we have enough role models?36:02I think no. We probably could use more role models, but anyone can be a role model. I think it's also you don't need a role model who's who's aiming to be at the top of their game. I there's wonderful role models who have you know figured it out beautifully and do something differently. And and they're so I think the question is not really who should be a role model, but who should be your role model. Because I think a lot of people should ask themselves, what do I want my life to look like? Do I want, you know, this nine to five four days a week?36:34Because that is also a model that works for some of my colleagues where they've you know they have compressed hours or they do they do things. So there's lots of different ways of doing this. And and I think it's figuring out kind of what recipe you're looking for and who has that recipe that you can talk to. And it could be it could be anyone, really. I think we undervalue how just everyday colleagues should be role models by, you know, in some aspects that you might care about doing. so yeah, I think probably role models in general for the field is useful, but then role models for life is really they're they're everywhere, and we should probably make more use of them.37:11Yeah, that that's quite interesting. So having your tribe of role models or your tribe of mentors that you can learn this from, learn that from. Yeah, that's that's quite interesting because I mean I I as you were saying that was also reflecting as how I mean I I have a lot of role models. So role models for people outside, I mean for live outside work, academic mentors. So you have you become you have this tribe or this board, shall we say, of role models slash, slash mentors, which is quite quite helpful.37:43Yeah. I mean we need more diversity in general in robotics, and so I think the more we can do in that, the the better as well. Yeah, that's that that that's quite good. Is there anything that universities and organizations could advocate and support women, academics in their roles? Probably. I think anything that has to do with childcare is very welcome. It's still very expensive to to have childcare. and some like we have we have a university child's care, but it's always full.38:17So clearly things need to expand as many universities have grown. And so I think there's just a need to I think it's probably one of the biggest ones that can that can help support and not just women, just just you know, families in general around universities. I think there's probably just also making more visible what's possible. There's a lot of flexibility on taking leave, both for for for all partners for different reasons for childcare or for other reasons for caring. And so I think making it's becoming more and more clear what's possible, and I think that's that's good as well because it gives people that flexibility of how they can they can arrange their their life when needed.38:59I think universities, this is something the US and Switzerland do perhaps better, is they have dual career tracks where they hire they hire couples. Oh and that is really smart because one of the most challenging things, I think, in academia is having a dual role for you and your partner in a similar place. Doesn't need to be exactly the same university, but a similar place. And and very often with those dual hires, you get they're gonna stay for a very long time because they have that stability, they can raise their family.39:32That would be extremely useful. they have to fulfill all the conditions and fair hiring and all of that. But that that is an active mechanism to recruit people in other places that we do not necessarily do here. That's quite interesting because if you're able to get a family to stay, I mean, they will stay because the kids have to develop their networks, you don't want to uphold the kids, but also it keeps a science community bubbling on. And then you can have this community of child carers that you can leave your child with a friend, you know, and you you you you go to you can't do things and you take turns, taking care of each other's kids.40:10So that's quite interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I think every every place needs their own solutions, everything is very different, but yeah, at least here we have a community that thinks about these Yeah, brilliant. So is there a moment in your career that you experience a mental shift and change to your view of the world? No. I don't think so. I don't be because I'm always hopeful, I think I'm just hopeful about the next thing. So there hasn't been like a shift or an epiphany or anything anything like that.40:42It's just crack on and carry on, I think, on the same same mode of operation. since this sometimes I'll be like, you know, everyone has a bit of, oh gosh, this is never gonna work. Yeah, yeah. But then but then you move because there's enough projects and ideas, you kind of just move on to the next thing and and carry on. I haven't changed my way of operating other than re-juggling and having a bit more chaos. That's very interesting.41:12So but but I if if I summarize what you said there, even though you don't think it's a mental shift, there is a being hopeful, have a lot of ideas, and keep trying the ideas and you know, recombining them in new ways. Yeah, I'll take that. Okay. That's a came what. Alright, cool. And so if an early career researcher were listening to this episode today, one what is the one thing that you would hope they know about academia and what do you think they can do differently tomorrow?41:46So academia I think is a really exciting place because you can pursue ideas you're excited about. I would say when you're in early career, most of the conversations I have with my students when they're reaching the point where they're gonna start looking for jobs at the end of a PhD or whatnot, is I'm asking them what job they want, and the job they want does not exist. And so I often realize, and the reason it doesn't exist is I think because we're naively hopeful in my team. And then so they reach a point where they they think this job they want, which could be, you know, a combination of art and robots and just something that doesn't exist.42:24And then at that point I have to be like, right, either you can either find a job that does exist, that could be academia, industry, startup, spin-out, something else, in which case you should look for someone who has that job and talk to them. Very many, like I'll take calls often of people who are like, How did, you know, how did you do this? And you 15-minute call with someone who has the job that you want in whatever discipline. And that at least tells you what it is. Because academia is all, you know, great ideas. It's also admin, it's also teaching, it's also endless grant application. Like there's the reality of the whole package, and it's useful to know that when you're aiming for for a career.42:59But the other thing I tell them is if that is the job you want and it doesn't exist, I don't know a single person in the world that has that job, you need to figure out how the heck to do that. And so that takes strategy. You can't just wish yourself into an in like a job that doesn't exist. And so that's my my my advice for early careers. At some point when you're thinking about the next stage, actually think of the job you want. If it exists, talk to someone who has that job if you can't find someone. And if it doesn't, then you need to be very strategic about how you get to that that that dream, which is possible.43:30You shouldn't let go of that, but you just then need to be strategic about it. Brilliant, brilliant. All right. so what what is one small change that you will say has improved your productivity or well being or gets you back into the zone? You seem to be very hopeful person, but is there anything that you could I mean things that improved your productivity or well being? I think in In research, it's having little low-hanging fruits, the little thing you can do that can give you gratification.44:08So that could be, you know, writing a blog post because it goes out instantly. It doesn't have to go through a gazillion reviews. It could be that we so we're in my fellowship, we're testing our robots in the neighborhood. And so every month we chat with our neighbors and then we try a robot in the neighborhood. And that is so satisfying because literally we're like, okay, we're going to test the robot. And then the robot drives around the neighborhood and the neighbors come to chat. And those are all low-hanging fruits, but that actually build up over time into stuff that's meaningful. And so it just shows you that the train keeps rolling and success is, you know, prog progress, not success, progress is being being made.44:43So I think low-hanging fruits are really, really helpful. I think on on the more everyday life, it's just realizing you can't you can't make everything work perfectly at all, like in in life and all of that. You just have to do the best, the best you can. I don't know if that brings happiness or well-being, but there is like a realization that you you have to let go to like doing everything. so take some shortcuts and all of that, and it's okay. Yeah, that's interesting because when you have the high impact, low-anging fruits, it gives you the sustenance to tackle the more harder problems.45:21So that that's that's quite that was that's that's quite a good tip. But that but then like in family life, you just can't do everything. So you you need to like just do what you can, I think. Exactly. And accept that some things will not be 100% perfect. Yeah. Yeah, and you also because you have less time, you also do yeah, yeah, yeah, give and take. So yeah. All right. So we're we're nearing the end of our podcast today. And as a tradition, we have quick fire questions to our guests. Are you ready? I am. All right. So what book will you recommend outside your field?45:52The Wild Robot. Is that outside my field? I guess it is. It's a kid's book. Why will you recommend The Wild Robot? It's so good. There's it's a trilogy. There's three books, and it's it's for kids, but actually it's great for grown-ups to read as well. And this robot is lost in an island all alone and learns animal language and is so nurturing and kind. And yeah, it's a great story, both about robotics and about nature, which is a very strange mix. Brilliant. Alright. What is the most overrated academic habit?46:25Trying to do everything perfectly. Trusting. Cool. Alright. Well, why is that? Because when you do things perfectly, it takes a lot of time for very little gain. And then you get stuck in a rabbit hole and you lose sight of the vision. I see. Interesting. Yeah, that's that's a lot of there's a lot in there. But it's something that everybody needs to think about. Right. Best pushes on that 100 pound. Lobster. Lobster!46:55Or food, some fancy food, a very fancy like a Michelin star restaurant or something. Brilliant. Yeah. I think that actually links to my next question. Pastime that relieves stress and gets you back into the zone. Yeah. Food, cooking, going to good restaurants. Yeah. Thank you very much, Sabin. It's been great to have you on our podcast, The Human Stories Behind the Robots, and we look forward to having you again. Thank you very much and take good care.47:27Thanks, John. It was great to be here. Thank you for listening to this episode of Human Stories Behind the Robots. If you have enjoyed this conversation, please follow and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss future episodes. You can also learn more about the UK RAS network, our events, activities, and opportunities by visiting our website. We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, so please share it with your colleagues and friends.47:59I've been Dr. John Oyeco, and this has been the Human Stories Behind the Robots. Until next time, thank you for listening.
