Episodes

  • Event-Driven E-Skins Protect Both Robots and Humans
    Aug 11 2025

    Professor Gordon Cheng builds humanoid robots that can feel their environment using artificial skin. In this episode of Brains and Machines, he talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about how the skin was designed, how it improves safety, and why neuromorphic engineering will be important for machine autonomy. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

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    47 mins
  • Digital Prototypes May Enable Analog Neuromorphic Chips
    Jul 10 2025

    Dr. Charlotte Frenkel from the Technical University of Delft set records with a low-power neuromorphic chip she designed as part of her Ph.D. In this episode of Brains and Machines, she talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about what she has learned about building simplicity into chips and integrity into benchmarks. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

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    52 mins
  • IBM Used Mathematics as Compass on Journey to NorthPole
    Jun 7 2025

    Dharmendra Modha’s TrueNorth chip added the word neuromorphic to the technorati lexicon back in 2014. In this episode of Brains and Machines, he talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London about how that project led to his work on NorthPole and the axiomatic approach he took to design. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

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    49 mins
  • Rippling Signals May Provide Working Memory in the Brain
    May 5 2025

    For 50 years Dr. Terry Sejnowski has modelled the brain and used his insights to help inform AI. In this episode of Brains and Machines, he talks to Dr. Sunny Bains of the University College London about how information flows both ways between neuroscience and engineered intelligence, proposes a new way of looking at memory and considers the Hopfield-Hinton Nobel Prize. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

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    50 mins
  • Making Analog Chip Designs Without Analog Designers
    Apr 6 2025

    Dr. Jennifer Hasler of Georgia Tech is best known for her work with field programmable analog arrays (FPAAs). In this episode of Brains and Machines, she talks about the importance of, and progress in, analog electronics for AI with Dr. Sunny Bains of the University College London. Discussion follows with Dr .Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

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    47 mins
  • BrainChip’s IP for Targeting AI Applications at the Edge
    Mar 9 2025

    Tony Lewis, CTO for BrainChip, and four other key scientists talk to Sunny Bains of the University College London. They discuss their business strategy, their temporal event-based neural network (TENN), and the next iteration of the Akida chip. Discussion follows with Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

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    46 mins
  • Embracing the Efficiency of the Neuromorphic Hairball
    Jan 5 2025

    In this new episode of Brains and Machines, Dr. Katie Schuman of the University of Tennessee explains the advantages of evolutionary approaches in neural processing to Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

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    47 mins