Steve Cousins (Stanford University) - Real-World Robotics

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Business, Life Lessons, Creativity, Startups, Strategy, Thought Leadership, Education, Stanford University, Leadership, Challenges, Journey, Culture, Etl, Innovation, Founders, Stanford, Entrepreneurship

4.5 • 740 Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Steve Cousins is the executive director of the Stanford Robotics Center and founder of Relay Robotics (formerly Savioke), which builds autonomous service robots for hotels and healthcare. Cousins’ career reflects a commitment to advancing robotics from research to real-world applications. In this presentation, he shares stories of his time in research, startups, and academia to illustrate practical advice about hiring, developing robotics products, and bringing robotics into new industries.

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders and other Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at the Stanford School of Engineering. STVP empowers aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everybody to the Entrepreneurial Thought Leader seminar at Stanford University.
0:18.0	The Entrepreneur Thought Leader seminar is brought to you by basis,
0:22.7	the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students and STVP, Stanford Engineering's Entrepreneurship Center.
0:29.6	I'm Ravi Balani, a lecturer in the management science and engineering department and the director
0:34.0	of Alchemist and accelerator for enterprise startups. Today, I have the pleasure of Alchemist, an accelerator for enterprise startups.
0:43.2	Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming our next ETL keynote as part of the centennial,
0:44.7	Steve Cousins.
0:50.8	Steve is continuing the tradition we have this quarter of celebrating the School of Engineering Centennial by highlighting Stanford Engineering amazing contributions to entrepreneurship.
0:56.0	And Steve has shaped the modern robotics ecosystem more than most people probably realize.
1:04.0	Steve is the executive director of the Stanford Robotics Center and the founder of Relay Robotics, which was formerly Savvy Oak,
1:13.5	which builds autonomous service robots for hotels and healthcare.
1:18.1	The through line in Steve's career is he's always been passionate about pushing robotics
1:23.1	from research to real-world applications.
1:27.2	He was previously the CEO and president of Willow Garage,
1:30.3	which helped launch the open source robotics movement through the creation of Ross, the
1:35.3	robot operating system. How many people have heard of Ross? Okay. So even if, isn't that fantastic?
1:40.3	And if you haven't heard of it, you've probably used products that are built where
1:45.1	Ross is really foundational.
1:46.6	Amazon, think about their warehouse robotics, Boston Dynamics, Cruise, NASA, a lot of
1:55.0	their robots are built on things that are coming out of Ross.
1:59.8	Steve's also the founding board member of the Open Source
2:02.0	Robotics Foundation, and he's received the I-Triple E Award for Invention and Entrepreneurship
	...

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