The 10 Best Robotics Podcasts

Robots are no longer just the stuff of science fiction – they are a reality of our modern world. From industrial automation and warehouse logistics to surgical robots, autonomous vehicles, drones, and the new generation of humanoid robots powered by AI foundation models, machines are reshaping how we live, work, and travel.

For anyone who wants to keep up with this rapidly moving field, podcasts have become one of the most efficient and engaging formats available. They turn long commutes, workouts, or daily walks into an opportunity to hear directly from the researchers, founders, and engineers building the future. Where written news gives you a snapshot, a good podcast gives you context, debate, and the kind of unguarded technical detail that rarely makes it into press releases.

The shows on this list cover the full spectrum: cutting-edge academic research, the business of robotics, embodied AI and humanoids, soft robotics, the Robot Operating System (ROS), human-robot interaction, and the cultural and ethical questions that come with sharing our world with intelligent machines. Some are deeply technical and aimed at working roboticists; others are accessible enough that a curious teenager could pick them up and follow along. Whether you are a robotics professional, a student, an investor, or simply fascinated by where this is all going, you should find several shows here worth subscribing to.

All ten podcasts on this list are confirmed active in 2025-2026 and we selected them for a mix of editorial quality, depth, longevity, and the breadth of topics they cover together. They are listed in no particular order.

The Audrow Nash Podcast is the successor to the popular Sense Think Act Podcast, which Audrow Nash hosted under Open Robotics until stepping down to launch this independent show. It carries forward the same long-form, technically meaty format that made its predecessor a favorite among working roboticists.

Each episode features in-depth, unscripted conversations with CEOs, CTOs, founders, and researchers building real robotics products – from humanoid platforms and autonomous construction robots to vision systems and industrial autonomy. Recent guests include leaders from Agility Robotics, Polymath Robotics, Luxonis, BotBuilt, Formic, and PickNik Robotics.

Nash is an engineer himself, which shows: he asks specific, technically informed questions and is comfortable letting guests get deep into architecture, business model, and engineering tradeoffs. Episodes typically run between 60 and 100 minutes, making this a great pick for longer listening sessions where you want substance over soundbites.

The HRI Podcast, produced by the human-robot-interaction.org community, focuses specifically on human-robot interaction – arguably the most important applied research area as humanoid and service robots begin sharing space with people in homes, hospitals, factories, and public spaces.

Hosted by Christoph Bartneck along with rotating co-hosts and panels of academic experts, the show covers topics such as the ethics of humanoid robots, the politeness (or rudeness) of conversational AI, robot bullying, the actual capabilities of the new generation of humanoids, and the role of large language models in human-robot interaction. The tone is thoughtful and skeptical – a useful counterweight to the relentless hype cycle around humanoid robots and AI.

Episodes are released roughly monthly and typically feature a small panel of researchers, which keeps the conversation lively. Transcripts are available as PDFs, which makes the show easy to cite and reference. Recommended for researchers, designers, ethicists, and anyone who wants to think more carefully about how robots and people should fit together.

The Robohub Podcast is one of the longest-running and most respected robotics podcasts, with nearly 250 episodes featuring some of the most influential people in the field, including Rodney Brooks, Dean Kamen, and Helen Greiner.

It is a non-profit production of the Robohub community, where the interviewers themselves are researchers, entrepreneurs, and engineers active in robotics. That gives the conversations a different texture from typical journalist-led interviews: questions are technical, often very specific, and assume a serious interest in the subject – while still being framed for a general audience.

The podcast covers a wide range of topics, including the latest advances in robotics and AI research, the ethical and social implications of robotics and AI, autonomous systems, and the impact of robotics on industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation. New episodes are released approximately every two weeks.

Hosted by Pieter Abbeel – UC Berkeley professor, co-founder of Covariant, and one of the most influential researchers in modern AI and robot learning – The Robot Brains Podcast is the closest thing the field has to a dedicated “founders and pioneers” show. The roster of past guests reads like a who's who of contemporary AI and robotics: Geoffrey Hinton, John Schulman, Andrej Karpathy, Jitendra Malik, Jesse Levinson, Raffaello D'Andrea, and many more.

Episodes explore how far humanity has come in its quest to build machines that can perceive, reason, and act in the physical world. Conversations move fluently between cutting-edge research, deep technical detail, and the broader societal implications of advanced AI, with Abbeel often steering guests into the kinds of questions only an insider would ask.

New episode releases have slowed since the show's most active period, but the back catalog of more than 60 episodes remains an exceptional educational resource and is regularly updated with new conversations.

Host Jim Beretta has spent more than two decades in industrial marketing for the automation, robotics, and capital equipment sectors, and that experience runs through every episode of The Robot Industry Podcast. Produced in partnership with A3 (the Association for Advancing Automation), the show is the go-to podcast for the business side of robotics – integrators, OEMs, manufacturers, and the people who actually buy and deploy robots in the real world.

The podcast covers topics such as the latest advancements in robotic technology, the challenges and opportunities facing the industry, end-of-arm tooling, machine vision, AI-driven automation, mobile manipulation, and the realities of selling and supporting industrial automation. Beretta has now passed episode #150 and recently launched a sister show, Automation Matters, focused more narrowly on marketing and business development for automation companies.

If your interest in robotics is commercial – investing in it, building a company around it, or simply understanding the manufacturing economy that surrounds it – this is one of the most consistently useful shows you can subscribe to.

The Robot Report Podcast is the audio companion to The Robot Report, one of the leading online publications covering the robotics industry. Hosted by Steve Crowe and Mike Oitzman, the show is released weekly and has now passed its 225th episode.

The format combines news recaps with in-depth interviews of leading roboticists, founders, and innovators. The podcast covers a wide range of topics, from industrial and service robots to drones, autonomous vehicles, humanoids, warehouse automation, and artificial intelligence. The hosts also frequently broadcast from major industry events such as the Robotics Summit, RoboBusiness, MODEX, ICRA, and CES, providing on-the-ground coverage that is hard to find elsewhere.

If you only have time for one robotics podcast and want to stay current on what is actually happening across the industry – from iRobot's bankruptcy to humanoid funding rounds to Waymo's expansion plans – this is the show to subscribe to first.

Hosted by Dr. Claire Asher – a science communicator with a background in ecology and conservation – the Robot Talk Podcast originally launched in 2020 by the EPSRC UK-RAS Network and is now supported by the Hamlyn Centre at Imperial College London and a community of Patreon backers. It is now in its sixth season and has surpassed 130 weekly episodes.

Each episode features a single guest, typically a robotics researcher, exploring a focused topic such as soft robotics for prosthetic limbs, microrobots, biohybrid robots, robots for ocean monitoring, swarm robotics, robot ethics, and the design of legged robots. Asher's background as a science communicator means even highly technical topics are made accessible to a broad audience without losing depth.

The show has a notably international roster of guests and a strong focus on academic research, making it an excellent counterpart to the more industry-focused podcasts on this list.

The ROS Developers Podcast is a niche but indispensable show for anyone working with the Robot Operating System (ROS), the popular open-source framework that helps researchers and developers build and reuse code between robotics applications. Produced by The Construct and hosted by its CEO Ricardo Tellez, the podcast features interviews with the experts who actually maintain and extend ROS.

Recent episodes have covered ROS 2 navigation (Nav2), ros2_control, generative AI tools for robotics (including ros2ai), the Open Source Robotics Alliance, large-scale realistic simulation with Open 3D Engine, ROS for drones, and the future of ROS in a world increasingly dominated by humanoid robots and foundation models.

If you are a ROS developer or considering a career in robotics software engineering, this is the most focused and practical robotics podcast you can listen to. New episodes are released less frequently than they once were, but the existing archive of more than 130 episodes remains a goldmine.

The Soft Robotics Podcast began as a niche show focused on the field of soft robotics – a subfield that deals with the design and development of robots made from flexible and compliant materials such as silicone, rubber, and other polymers – but has since expanded into a broader robotics show under host Dr. Marwa ElDiwiny.

Recent episodes range from deep technical dives into actuator design, novel drives, and the mechanical design choices behind humanoid robots, to high-profile interviews and exclusive industry conversations – including a widely-discussed episode in late 2025 with the CEO of K-Scale Labs about the company's wind-down.

The podcast publishes frequently – sometimes multiple episodes per week – and ElDiwiny is unusually willing to ask hard, specific design questions of both academics and industry leaders. With several hundred episodes now available, it is one of the most active robotics podcasts in the field.

This Is Robotics: Radio News is a monthly news roundup hosted by Tom Green of Asian Robotics Review. It is built around a single goal: to compile the most important global robotics news, views, and interviews of the past month into a 30-minute show that you can listen to on your commute, at the gym, or over breakfast.

The show takes a notably global perspective – with frequent coverage of robotics developments in Korea, Japan, and China that other shows often underreport – and ties technology stories to bigger-picture themes around automation, demographics, jobs, and the geopolitics of advanced manufacturing. Recent episodes have covered humanoid robotics in 2025, Andy Rubin's bet on Japanese humanoids, Pittsburgh's transformation from Steel City to robotics hub, and pharma robotics.

If you want a single, well-edited monthly briefing on the state of global robotics rather than a weekly firehose, this is the show for you.