Robotics people are busy and there’s often rarely time to read anything other than essential work-related material. But robotics people are also curious about their domain and the world at large so we know they make time to read. We were interested in what people read to keep themselves informed or simply for pleasure. We thought it would interest other members of euRobotics to know what colleagues in robotics are reading. Result: a new series, starting in this edition of the newsletter with the reading, listening and viewing habits of a familiar figure, Radhika Gudipati. And what better time than Christmas to read it? Welcome to… The Reader.
Name Radhika Gudipati
Roles: Technical Specialist – Robotics (ARIA), TG Coordinator (euRobotics)
Location: London, UK
We gave Radhika a set of categories – robotics news, current affairs, other interests and sources of information and asked her to share with us her preferred media. This is what she told us…
„
These are the newsletters I follow about robotics-related news:
Six Degrees of Robotics – https://sixdegreesofrobotics.substack.com/ – Aaron has a unique style of putting even the difficult points forward in a funny way
- We all are robots – https://ziegler.substack.com/ – Lukas Ziegler – I have known him as a roboticist at a startup from a while and he supports science and innovation for all which I do too
- Robots & Startups – https://robotsandstartups.substack.com/ – Andra runs Silicon Valley Robotics – she has been a great supporter of diversity in robotics and shares all the robotic companies news about who raised how much, who’s acquired by whom?
To stay in touch with world news I quickly skim through the news while I am travelling on the tube* to work (*The ‘tube’ is the name people in London call their famous transport network, the London Underground).
- BBC News app: for world and national news
- I recently subscribed to ‘The New York Times – The Morning’ newsletter – it gives byte size information about happenings in the US and also covers some bits of world news. I’m finding it useful to keep track of the news happening in the US 🙂
- My husband keenly follows the news from India, so I hear the important news from him. Here’s the local newspaper from the Telangana (the state I come from): https://www.eenadu.net/
Science & Tech news: Substack offers many options: My colleagues at ARIA keep recommending some authors to follow like Adam Mastroianni, Ben Reihardt, Eric Gilliam
My best time to listen to podcasts is while doing household chores. I realised I am doing this listening more often after the kids moved to university, otherwise, we used to chat while doing the chores together!
- Robot Talk Podcast (for robotics related content): https://www.robottalk.org/ – Claire, the podcast host, is good at spotting a diverse range of guests from across the globe in robotics industry, research and academia
- BBC Sounds app: If you like to get up to speed on different topics – BBC Sounds has some good podcast series like ‘Understand’, ‘Scotcast’, The Explanation’, etc.
On the radio, my usual options while driving longer distances are:
- Tollywood or Bollywood music
- BBC Radio 4
On TV:
My kids learnt Telugu (our home language) speaking with parents as well as watching movies :), so we watch Telugu movies together on Netflix or Amazon as a family.
I enjoy watching the books turned into movies after I finish reading the books. Harry Potter (my all-time favourite), Hunger Games, just finished reading The Lord of the Rings series (looking forward to watching the movies with family during the Christmas break)
I don’t tend to watch TV series unless someone recommends one – ‘Young Sheldon’ and ‘Monk‘ are a couple I loved watching.
Sports, hobby news and other pastimes:
I grew up watching cricket in India and my Dad introduced me to Tennis grand slams. I never played tennis but I follow them :). I am a recreational runner, so I am subscribed to some running newsletters:
- Marathon handbook – https://marathonhandbook.com/
- Laura Norris Running – https://lauranorrisrunning.substack.com/
- ESPN Crickinfo – https://www.espncricinfo.com/ – I set up alerts for teams/tournaments I like to follow
- TNSS Live: https://tnnslive.com/ – I tend to follow the grandslams mainly
- Gaming apps: Solitaire (I play the Daily Challenge, my kids find that very funny as to how serious I am with it 😅), The NY Times puzzles (we keep competing here as a family 😂)
”