#69 Kat Scott: First They Laugh, Then They Fight, Then You Win, Open-Source Robotics

I sat down with Kat Scott, Developer Relations Engineer at Intrinsic AI (a Google company), who’s spent her entire 20+ year career in robotics. Kat is the developer advocate for the Robot Operating System (ROS), the open-source, “Linux for robots” that’s quietly been downloaded nearly a billion times. We get into why she believes open source has already won in robotics, the game theory behind why that happened, and why we can’t bring production back home until we bring back the boring stuff at the base of the pyramid.

Enjoy.

Recording date: June 10, 2026

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

03:18 Rats And Plants

07:30 ROS: The Robotics Operating System

14:32 Intrinsic’s Role In Robotics

16:17 Running The ROS Developer Community

18:13 Open vs Closed-Source In Robotics

21:13 Breakdown Of Robotics Stack

24:39 Open Source And Incentive Structures

28:13 State Of The Robotics Industry In 2026

32:26 Reindustrialization In The U.S.

44:00 Distribution And System Integrators

49:06 Robotics-As-A-Service

54:07 Building Useful Robots

59:11 Rapid Fire

01:02:17 Open Source Calls Checkmate

Connect with Kat Scott:

* ROS: https://www.ros.org/

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherineascott/

* GitHub: https://github.com/kscottz

* X: https://x.com/kscottz?lang=es

Remember to go direct!

Jordan

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