Highlights :
History of delivering high-quality code, from demo to production
Published 7 academic papers on Robotics, AI, and education
Shipped 5 consumer robots (Form One, Romo, Romo V2, 3DR Solo, Kuri), 1 industrial robot (Canvas), 1 surgical robot (Remedy)
Built and programmed DragonBot (the first robot to use a phone as its primary computer), securing a $10M NSF grant for socially assistive robots
Education:
University of Texas at Austin (BS, MS)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MS)
Companies:
Adam Setapen is a computer scientist and roboticist who is passionate about making products that are both easy to use and learn through experience. With concentrated academic research and real-world experience bringing consumer, industrial, and medical robots to market, he has become an expert in building and programming intelligent (and sometimes adorable) electromechanical systems. Adam thrives in environments that emphasize learning and collaboration, in which he can fully devote his skills to products and causes he cares about.
Adam has held positions at Remedy Robotics, Canvas Construction, Mayfield Robotics, AltSchool, Romotive, Primed, and 3D Robotics. He is a hacker at heart and considers himself a "full-stack" roboticist, building his own robots and expressive objects to pressure-test ideas. He loves empowering people to be builders, teaching hands-on robotics courses and spending as much time in the shop as he can.
Adam has published papers on machine learning, robot design, learning from demonstration, and novel robot control interfaces. His academic work explored how humans can bootstrap autonomous systems using sparse datasets collected through real-world interaction. In industry, his focus has been building robot software that’s dependable in messy reality and gets better over time.
Adam is currently part of Amazon Frontier AI & Robotics. Most recently, he led the software team at Remedy Robotics, building surgical robotic systems for neuro-intervention, including leading the first-in-human medical trials. Adam received a Master's degree from the MIT Media Lab where he spent his time building fuzzy dragon robots in the Personal Robots Group. Adam also earned an M.S. studying machine learning in the Learning Agents Research Group and a B.S. in the Turing Scholars Computer Science program, both at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a certified Yoga instructor, an eager snowboarder, an avid musician, and a bit of a coffee snob.