{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,9]],"date-time":"2026-07-09T06:47:13Z","timestamp":1783579633318,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"Emerald","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,3]],"date-time":"2022-01-03T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1641168000000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/site-policies"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["IR"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,11]]},"abstract":"\nPurpose<\/jats:title>\nThe following article is a \u201cQ&A interview\u201d conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry PhD and inventor regarding his pioneering efforts and the commercialization of bringing a technological invention to market. This paper aims to discuss these issues.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n\nDesign\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title>\nThe interviewee is Dr Raffaello D\u2019Andrea, a highly successful entrepreneur and proven business leader and one of the world\u2019s foremost leaders in robotics and machine learning. D\u2019Andrea is Founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board at Verity, the world\u2019s leading autonomous indoor drone company, as well as a Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. D\u2019Andrea is also one of the co-founders and advisors of Robo-Global, an index and research company focused on investments in robotics, automation and artificial intelligence. In this interview, D\u2019Andrea shares some of his business and personal experiences of working in industry and academia and his criteria for turning his ideas into successful working systems.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n\nFindings<\/jats:title>\nRaffaello D\u2019Andrea\u2019s entire career is built on his ability to bridge theory and practice. D\u2019Andrea combined his love for science with his need to create and received a BS degree in engineering science at the University of Toronto, where he was awarded the Wilson Medal as the top graduating student in 1991. He obtained both his MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering at Caltech, and then he joined the Cornell faculty as an assistant professor. While on leave from Cornell, from 2003 to 2007, he co-founded the disruptive warehouse automation company Kiva Systems, where he led the systems architecture, robot design, robot navigation and coordination, and control algorithms efforts. In 2014, D\u2019Andrea took robotics technology into the air and founded Verity, the world\u2019s first company to deliver a fully integrated autonomous, indoor drone-based system solution.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n\nOriginality\/value<\/jats:title>\nRaffaello D\u2019Andrea combines academia, business and the arts to reinvent autonomous systems. D\u2019Andrea was a founding member of the Systems Engineering Program at Cornell, where he established robot soccer as the flagship, multidisciplinary team project. In addition to pioneering the use of semi-definite programming for the design of distributed control systems, he went on to lead the Cornell Robot Soccer Team to win four world international RoboCup championships. Kiva Systems, co-founded by D\u2019Andrea and acquired by Amazon in 2012, helped the re-branded Amazon Robotics to disrupt the entire warehousing and logistics systems industry. Additionally, D\u2019Andrea is an internationally-exhibited new media artist, best known for the Robotic Chair (Ars Electronica, ARCO, London Art Fair, National Gallery of Canada) and Flight Assembled Architecture (FRAC Centre). With his team at Verity, he created the drone design and choreography for Cirque Du Soleil\u2019s Paramour on Broadway, Metallica\u2019s WorldWired Tour and C\u00e9line Dion\u2019s Courage Tour. Other D\u2019Andrea creations include the Flying Machine Arena, where flying robots perform aerial acrobatics, juggle balls, balance poles and cooperate to build structures; the Distributed Flight Array, a flying platform consisting of multiple autonomous single propeller vehicles that are able to drive, dock with their peers and fly in a coordinated fashion; the Balancing Cube, a dynamic sculpture that can balance on any of its edges or corners and its little brother Cubli, a small cube that can jump up, balance and walk; Blind Juggling Machines that can juggle balls without seeing them, and without catching them. D\u2019Andrea is also collaborating with scientists, engineers, and wingsuit pilots to create an actively controlled suit that will allow humans to take off and land at will, to gain altitude, even to perch, while preserving the intimacy of wingsuit flight. D\u2019Andrea has received the IEEE Robotics and Automation Award, the Engelberger Robotics Award, the IEEE\/IFR Invention and Entrepreneurship Award in Robotics and Automation and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. In 2020, he was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame and elected to the National Academy of Engineering.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/ir-12-2021-0283","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,30]],"date-time":"2021-12-30T12:39:02Z","timestamp":1640867942000},"page":"177-180","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["The Pransky interview: Dr Raffaello D\u2019Andrea, Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the board at Verity; Entrepreneur; Professor; Scientist and Artist"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"49","author":[{"given":"Joanne","family":"Pransky","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"140","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,3]]},"container-title":["Industrial Robot: the international journal of robotics research and application"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/content\/doi\/10.1108\/IR-12-2021-0283\/full\/xml","content-type":"application\/xml","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/content\/doi\/10.1108\/IR-12-2021-0283\/full\/html","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,24]],"date-time":"2025-07-24T21:40:39Z","timestamp":1753393239000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"http:\/\/www.emerald.com\/ir\/article\/49\/2\/177-180\/186362"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,3]]},"references-count":0,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,3]]},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2022,2,11]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1108\/IR-12-2021-0283"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1108\/ir-12-2021-0283","relation":{},"ISSN":["0143-991X","0143-991X"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0143-991X","type":"print"},{"value":"0143-991X","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2022,1,3]]}}}