Innovate Pasadena | Chris Aldrich

RSVPed Attending Innovate Pasaddena: Creating Lifelike Animate Companions that Enhance our Lives

Online event: July 17, 2020 at 08:30AM - 10:00AM

Moxie is an animate companion that promotes social and emotional development through play-based learning. Paolo Pirjanian will show a demo and speak to his journey developing Moxie and his vision for how technology can improve and enhance our lives.

We're at a tipping point of a paradigm shift in the way we will interact with technology. Embodied is aiming to lead this charge through an advanced social interface that respects humans’ natural modes of interaction, beyond simple verbal commands, to enable the next generation of computing, and to power a new class of machines that will change the world around us. Paolo will discuss how he and his team at Embodied are rethinking and reinventing how human-machine interaction is done - starting with the recent announcement of Moxie.

Moxie is an animate companion that helps children build social, emotional, and cognitive skills through everyday play-based learning and engaging content developed in association with experts in child development and education. Embodied has assembled a world class team of experts in engineering, technology, game design, and entertainment to bring to life a robot with machine learning technology that allows it to perceive, process and respond to natural conversation, eye contact, facial expressions and other behavior as well as recognize and recall people, places, and things.

Paolo will speak to his journey developing Moxie and his vision for how technology can improve and enhance our lives.

BIO: Paolo Pirjanian
Paolo Pirjanian is the former CTO of iRobot and early leader in the field of consumer robotics with 16+ years of experience developing and commercializing cutting-edge home robots. He led world-class teams and companies at iRobot®, Evolution Robotics®, and others. In 2016, Paolo founded Embodied, Inc. with the vision to build socially and emotionally intelligent companions that improve care and wellness and enhance our daily lives.

Read An Almost Thirty Year Journey of a non-African-American Black Man Residing in the U.S. by

David Samuels (DLS Partners)

Before I moved to the United States of America in 1991, I had very mixed feelings about this country that called itself a “Melting Pot.” Perhaps it was because my Jamaican parents had siblings that had emigrated here, just as my parents had emigrated to England post World War II. In actuality, I was curious about the USA because of its history and accomplishments. As a young black British boy, it did not escape me that the racial history of American and England were significantly different. I was both aware of the relationship between England and its former colonies, as well as the unique history in America to slavery, Jim Crow and segregation, and its laws and views on interracial relationships. Just as in the famous work of Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” published in 1835, he also noted the irony of the freedom-loving nation’s mistreatment of Native Americans and its embrace of slavery.

I’ve met David several times at local events including Innovate Pasadena‘s excellent Friday Morning Coffee Meetup. It was great to see his article on the front page of the Pasadena Outlook (though I’d have put it above the fold) this morning. I was saddened not to find it on the Outlook’s website, but was glad to find it living on David’s own website so I could share it. (Hooray for the independent web and David’s owning his own content!)

I share it not only because his experiences are valuable and worth noting, but because I hope that people will take a look at the leadership services he’s offering to the community as well.

RSVPed Attending Innovate Pasadena: Space Architecture: The Future of Living in Space

Cross Campus, 85 N Raymond Ave, Pasadena, CA 91103, USA
April 10, 2020 at 08:15AM- April 10, 2020 at 09:30AM

What does the future of living in space look like? Is it going to look like the promise of sci-fi movies, or somewhat different? Join Anastasia Prosina for a peek at the necessary aspects for habitable modules to thrive in long-duration missions to Mars and why you should care.

The time when space exploration was only a matter of government has ended. In the past few years, a number of private space companies have skyrocketed. Elon Musk claims that the first manned crew to Mars will happen in 2024 whereas NASA plans to send humans to the same destination in the middle of the 2030s.

There is a lot of interest expressed on how we will get there, yet no particular plans on HOW we will sustain our presence in the severe environment. Yet, NASA estimated that the crew behavioral health is a secondary risk in manned space missions after radiation exposure. Human factor considerations increase with the longevity of missions, in particular, their application to where future travelers will be living to support the wellbeing of the crew in an enclosed environment.

Anastasia Prosina is an award-winning aspirational futurist and practitioner in Space Architecture, the nascent field of helping people thrive in small spaces in space. She is the Founder & CEO at Stellar Amenities, a company with the mission of complementing space habitats with lightweight, deployable & reconfigurable elements to support wellbeing in space. Anastasia has been involved in numerous space projects, from designing lightweight interior habitation structures for the TESSERAE self-assembling space station at MIT Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative to working on an Iceland-based Martian Analog Habitat commissioned by Mars Society. Her other places of work include aerospace company Excalibur Almaz, 4th Planet Logistics, and Galaktika Space. Anastasia holds a Masters in Space Architecture from Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture in proximity and collaboration of NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. Anastasia received a Bachelor's in Urban Design from Novosibirsk State University of Architecture, Design, and Art. Lived her entire life in Siberia, Russia, she is now paving her way in the Los Angeles space sector.

Checked into Cross Campus

A great talk about the importance of design in building almost anything, but particularly companies. The take away: while it may be somewhat more expensive to hire the people and do the work in the beginning, the ultimate products and the company will be measurably better off for it in the long run.

I stayed after until almost noon having an extended discussion with Robbie about a handful of design related topics including IndieWeb.org.

RSVPed Attending Innovate Pasadena: Differentiated by Design: Strategy for Early Stage Startups

Friday, February 14, 2020
8:15 AM to 9:30 AM
Cross Campus, 85 N. Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA

Design consistently improves the most profitable companies and products but why do many startups fail to integrate design strategy as they grow. Learn ways to utilize design to build teams, streamline products, connect to users and acquire customers.

Bio:
Robbie Nock is the Director of Entrepreneurship and Professional Practice at ArtCenter. His background spans media production, new technology and venture development and he is driven to connect design, business and engineering partners to develop new synergies for early-stage innovation. Robbie produces academic programs and provides strategic services for a global community of entrepreneurs, educators, investors and philanthropist.