Kenji Murakami

Roboticist who spent 8 years at Sony's AI Robotics division working on the Aibo line and human-robot interaction before joining the University of Tokyo's Intelligent Systems Lab. PhD from Carnegie Mellon where he built a robot that could fold towels (which took 3 years and is harder than it sounds). Born in Osaka, fascinated by robots since watching his grandfather repair industrial arms at a Toyota factory. Has published 40+ papers on manipulation, locomotion, and social robotics. Writes about robotics, the gap between demo videos and real capability, why humanoid robots are mostly a terrible idea, what elder care robots can realistically do in the next decade, and how Hollywood has ruined everyone's expectations. Known for a piece called 'Your Robot Can't Do That' that went viral in the VC community. Builds miniature mechanical insects as a hobby and has a collection of 200+.