From Hollywood to High-Rises: Making Robots with Asa Hammond

11/06/2025 23 min Temporada 1 Episodio 12

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Episode Synopsis

EPISODE 12From building gravity-defying camera rigs for Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity to sending drones into live nuclear reactors and, most recently, designing job-site robots that can survive the dust and chaos of construction, Asa Hammond’s career shows how precision engineering and artistic vision can coexist. In this conversation, Asa explains how the exacting pixel-perfect discipline of Hollywood VFX became the blueprint for ultra-reliable industrial robotics, why safety and repeatability always come before flashy features, and how new UX layers—voice, LLMs, demonstration learning—are finally making complex machines feel like familiar tools. Along the way, we hear tales of full-scale “stunt-double” reactors, the reality of folding-laundry robots, and what it takes to assemble a world-class, T-shaped engineering team that thrives at the edge of possibility.CHAPTERS00:29 – From Film Sets to Founders: Show Intro02:12 – Asa’s Hollywood-to-Hard-Hats Origin Story05:57 – Engineering Robots for Gravity09:05 – Reinventing Construction with Industrial Arms15:56 – Flying Drones Inside Nuclear ReactorsLINKSConnect with Asa HammondWebsite • LinkedIn • X/TwitterStay Connected with Founder ModeSubscribe to our newsletter: foundermode.kit.comConnect with KevinLinkedIn • X/TwitterConnect with JasonLinkedIn • X/Twitter