ffRoboCommunity is pleased to present an interview with Davin Sufer, WowWee's CTO, who operates out of WowWee's office in Hong Kong. Davin waxes philosophically about his role at WowWee, robots in society, and gives us some insight into what exciting prospects the future may hold for WowWee customers.

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Hello Davin. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. First off, please tell us a little about yourself and how you came to be at WowWee.

I was introduced to the one of the owners of WW by a common friend. We met briefly and I was invited to visit the Hong Kong office as a potential hire. Of course I was blown away by the sheer pace of Hong Kong, and WowWee in particular. I quickly realized that this was a great place to work. Once I returned home and caught my breath, I was offered a job at WowWee R&D in Hong Kong.

A few follow-up questions: What is your title exactly? How long have you been with the company? What are your day-to-day responsibilities? What are you primarily working on now?

My title is Chief Technology Officer. Basically this means that I am tasked with sourcing and assessing new technologies, managing relationships with third party technology partners and finding ways to incorporate their technologies into our products. Challenge here is to make sure that we have all the technologies we need for each project either in house, from vendors, or have a good source for them.

In addition to this I help manage the Electronics and Software R&D efforts at WW. My day to day efforts involve working on detailed specifications for our products, coming up with product ideas, following up with vendors and helping plan out development efforts with our in house software team.

What was your first robotic experience that made you who you are today?

I built my first "robot" with a friend while in elementary school. The project involved cardboard, some switches, an RC car and a broken Walkman. We drove it around and had it drive up to people. If you grabbed its hand it would trigger the walkman to play back a greeting.

Much later, in College, another friend introduced me to the world of robotics competitions. In our first year, we founded a Robotics Team and built a basketball playing robot for a Canada First Competition. We put together a strong team to recruit more students, raise money, create a documentary video AND build a robot in time for the competition. It was our first year competing and I am proud to say that we came in second place.

What do you find most rewarding working at WowWee and with robots?

It's quite rare to be able to see a project through from its early conceptualization, through R&D to production. At WowWee, Project Managers get to see this progression and it's a very rewarding experience.

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