Boston Dynamics is a robotics company known for creating advanced robots with highly dynamic movement and agility, designed to navigate complex environments.

Their robots, such as the Quadruped Spot and the Humanoid Atlas, have applications in industries ranging from logistics to public safety.

They also garner widespread attention with their impressive videos showcasing robots

performing complex tasks with precision. Matthew Melchano is Boston Dynamics vice president of software.

For more than 20 years, Matt has been a technical contributor and leader on robotics projects

such as Spot, Big Dog, LS3, and Sanflee.

He has led efforts in areas including software, product, and robotics autonomy, perception, and control.

Matt joins the podcast with Sean Falconer to talk about his wide-ranging work at Boston Dynamics.

This episode is hosted by Sean Falconer. Check the show notes for more information on Sean's work and where to find him.

Matt, welcome to the show.

Hey, Sean. Thanks very much. I'm happy to be here. Yeah, thanks for being here. I'm pretty excited about this. We don't have that many shows that touch on robotics a couple, but I feel like a lot of times robotics in some senses like a lot of people who end up studying engineering or even becoming software engineers. A lot of times that's like where they start is some interest in robotics. I'm kind of curious. Where did your

fascination with robotics begin? Well, when I was young, actually, like essentially like in elementary

school, I just became very excited about robots. And I remember telling my parents, you know,

oh, I'm going to grow up and be either a detective or a robotics person.

And I happened to luck out that I went the standard computer science track all throughout my education.

And then I decided when I was going into my master's that I wanted to shift gears and learn about an applied area, right?

Like learn how to apply software to robotics.

And I shifted gears, did work in that area,

and then graduated and was lucky enough

to get a job at Boston Dynamics, right?

When we started building robots at the beginning

of sort of the big dog era and got to live out

...