Meet the speaker lineup for the Robotics & Autonomous Vehicles Track at LiveWorx 2017, including Boston Engineering, CyPhy Works, Jibo, MIT, Soft Robotics, Vecna, WPI and more.
LiveWorx 2017 (May 22-25) takes place in less than two weeks at the Boston Convention Center, and Robotics Trends and Robotics Business Review are producing the event’s first-ever track dedicated to robotics.
The Robotics & Autonomous Vehicles Track will feature nine 45-minute sessions over two days (May 23-24) that cover a variety of robotics topics, including AI, industrial automation, healthcare robots, social robots, and more. Sessions will be interactive and alive with in-person demos, the latest robotics news, and use cases.
LiveWorx attendees must have an “All Access” pass to attend the Robotics & Autonomous Vehicles track. You can save 20% on an “All Access” pass using promo code: LWROBO17
Commercial Drones Take Flight: Current and Future Possibilities
Speaker: Helen Greiner, Founder & CTO, CyPhy Works
Date & Time: Tuesday, May 23, 9:30 AM – 10:15 AM
Commercial drones are helping businesses improve their efficiency, decision-making and safety. Commercial drones are transforming how many industries operate, including, construction, military, oil and gas, security and more. Learn how commercial drones can transform your business, the technologies helping the commercial drone industry take off, and the emerging breakthroughs on the horizon.
Designing Social Robots & Emotional AI
Speakers: Abdelrahman Mahmoud, Product Manager, Affectiva; Robert Pack, Chief Roboticist & Architect, Jibo
Moderator: Steve Crowe, Managing Editor, Robotics Trends
Date & Time: Tuesday, May 23, 10:30 AM – 11:15 AM
Humans are the most emotionally and socially advanced species on the planet. First-generation home robots, however, are task-based robots that don’t engage with people. Social robots that can read and understand human emotions, and display their own emotions, have been in development in research labs for some time, but they’re just now starting to make their way into homes. This session with explore the technologies powering social robots and emotional artificial intelligence. Social robots that understand and deliver human-like emotions are sophisticated machines, so we’ll explore the challenges involved and the benefits of building robots that are more natural to interact with. The session will also include a live demo of Affectiva’s emotional AI engine on the Jibo social robot.
Smart Robotics: Making Robots Intelligent, Cognitive, Aware
Speaker: Dan Kara, Research Director, Robotics, ABI Research
Date & Time: Tuesday, May 23, 11:30 AM – 12:15 PM
Any Internet search for the terms “artificial intelligence,” “cognition,” or “machine learning” with the word “robotics” will return a slew of research and commercial initiatives focused on the intersection of the technologies. Many of these are focused on using robotics to further the understanding of the brain, while others emphasize these technologies as an enabler for robotic decision making, object identification, vision processing, navigation, motor control, sensor integration and other functions, as well as speech, facial and emotion recognition. In this session, attendees will learn how the latest AI and machine learning software and hardware technologies and techniques are being employed to make robotics systems more intelligent.
Shared Robot Learning in Omni-Channel Order Fulfillment
Speaker: Daniel Theobald, Chief Innovation Officer, Vecna
Date & Time: Tuesday, May 23, 2:15 PM – 3:00 PM
When robots are able to share their experiences across platforms and form factors, more robots and flexible operations are possible. Interoperability and information sharing is crucial for wide adoption of autonomous systems.
Save 20% on your LiveWorx “All Access” pass using promo code: LWROBO17
Improving Patient Care with Medical Robots
Panelists: Joe Chapman, The MITRE Corporation; Gregory Fischer, WPI Robotics; Mark Johnson, University of Massachusetts Medical School; Krishna Venkatasubramanian, WPI
Moderator: Steve Crowe, Managing Editor, Robotics Trends
Date & Time: Tuesday, May 23, 3:15 PM – 4:00 PM
Medical robotics can lead to a reduction in healthcare costs, error prevention, and lessen the burden on healthcare workers. There are many opportunities for advancements in this industry that will improve patient care. At the same time, there are many challenges standing in the way of getting it right. This panel will discuss the technical challenges of developing medical robotics and cyber-physical systems that can improve patient care delivery while addressing the real cybersecurity, data analytics, and interoperability challenges.
Robotics and Smart Manufacturing
Panelists: Mark Silliman, CEO, Tend; Carl Vause, CEO, Soft Robotics
Moderator: Eugene Demaitre, Senior Editor, Robotics Business Review
Date & Time: Wednesday, May 24, 9:15 AM – 10:00 AM
For years, the manufacturing industry has been understandably excited about the conceptual vision of Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing. But for most companies, particularly those in the SMB community, these goals have seldom made it beyond the aspirational stage. But thanks to the advent of disruptive technologies, including soft robotics and cloud robotics software, manufacturers of any size can now optimize their existing production infrastructure. As a result, the vision of tomorrow’s production environment can be realized today.
Growing the Massachusetts Robotics Landscape
Panelists: Katie Stebbins, Assistant Secretary, Tech, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, EOHED, Commonwealth of MA; Durval Tavares, CEO, Aquabotix; Bob Treiber II, Co-founder and President, Boston Engineering
Moderator: Ron Trznadel, Director of Events & Sales, Robotics Trends
Date & Time: Wednesday, May 24, 10:15-11 AM
Massachusetts counts itself as one of the premier robotics clusters in the world. More than 120 robotics companies call Massachusetts home, and there are no signs of that number slowing down. This session will explore why Massachusetts is a great ecosystem for the robotics industry and the variables of running a business in the Commonwealth. CEOs will share their experiences and strategies in staffing and manufacturing in Massachusetts.
Save 20% on your LiveWorx “All Access” pass using promo code: LWROBO17
Additive Manufacturing and Automated Robot Design
Speaker: Dr. Robert MacCurdy, MIT
Date & Time: Wednesday, May 24, 3:00 PM – 3:45 PM
Building robots via conventional practice requires painstaking design and assembly steps that rely heavily on human intuition and individual expertise. Dr. Robert MacCurdy, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, has developed algorithms and fabrication techniques that automate the design and production of customized robots to accelerate this process, with the goal of automatically designing robots that “walk out of the printer.” MacCurdy’s research creates design synthesis algorithms and manufacturing technologies, with the goal of a unified software and hardware tool chain that can automatically synthesize, evaluate, and fabricate electromechanical devices. Realizing this goal will require a modular design and construction method that employs a small set of simple modules (cells) that are deployed in large assemblies to solve a specific task, an approach that I call “Multicellular Machines.” The robot design process is recast as a search over the position of modules in the assembly; fabrication is accomplished via the ordered placement of modules. I am working to address several key automation challenges: fabricating robot bodies, fabricating robot “brains”, and designing both.
The Importance of AI Verticalization in Robotics
Speaker: Kenn Harper, VP, Devices & Emerging Markets, Nuance Communications
Moderator: Steve Crowe, Managing Editor, Robotics Trends
Date & Time: Wednesday, May 24, 4:00 PM – 4:45 PM
Robotics is having a major impact on many markets. One of the keys to make robots even smarter is adapting cognitive and conversational AI for each robot and its application, audience and environment. This expert Q&A will explore the vital role AI verticalization plays in robotics and what’s needed to create a deeply verticalized conversational AI, addressing consumer and industrial IOT applications.
