The Robotics Summit & Expo, produced by The Robot Report, gets underway today at the Seaport World Trade Center. The two-day event will bring together 1,500-plus attendees to focus on the design, development, manufacture and delivery of commercial-class robotics and intelligent systems products and services.
Here’s a breakdown of what to expect on Day 1.
Keynotes
Breakfast Keynote
Time: 8:30 AM – 9:00 AM
Location: Amphitheater
Speaker: Joshua Ness, Senior Manager, Verizon 5G Labs
Why Innovators are Flocking to 5G (And What You Should Do About It)
5G has been a reality for only a short time, but innovators around the world have already begun creating new products, services, and applications that take advantage of its ultra-fast speeds, reduced latency, and greater network capacity. Thanks to 5G, ideas that at one time seem far-fetched have been become a reality in areas such as industrial robotics, education technology and first responder programs. 5G has ‘arrived’, and forward-thinking innovators are skating to where the puck is going to be. In this keynote session, you will lean learn how you can meet them there and be ready when this powerful enabling technology presents new opportunities for your business.
Opening Keynote
Time: 9:00 AM – 9:45 AM
Location: Amphitheater
Speaker: Deepu Talla, VP and GM, Autonomous Machines, NVIDIA
Bringing AI-Powered Robots to Life
Artificial intelligence is the most powerful technology of our time, giving machines the ability to sense, perceive, and interact with the world. AI is driving an exciting new era of robotics and high-performance computing platforms are critical to the creation of tomorrow’s machines — both big and small. And with new tools powering the future of autonomous machines, there’s no limit to what’s possible.
During this keynote presentation, Deepu Talla, VP and GM, Autonomous Machines, NVIDIA, will dive into the elements required to bring a product to life — embedded hardware, flexible software, and a strong ecosystem. He will also review some of the latest advancements in robotics research and provide examples of commercially successful robotics systems. Examples include cobots that can work alongside humans in manufacturing, last-mile delivery robots that bring food and products to consumers, and agricultural robots that will help feed Earth’s growing population. Talla will also describe how it is now faster and easier than ever for companies, researchers, developers, and makers to get up and running with robotics.
Time: 9:45 AM – 10:30 AM
Location: Amphitheater
Speaker: Roger Barga, General Manager, AWS Robotics and Autonomous Services, Amazon Web Services
The Role of the Cloud in the Future of Robotics
In this presentation Roger Barga, General Manager, AWS Robotics and Autonomous Services, Amazon Web Services, will discuss the role that cloud services will play in the future of robotics, allowing developers to partition functionality between their physical robot and the cloud, in particular compute intensive functionality such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.
He will also describe how artificial intelligence can enhance collaborative, consumer and personal assistant robot capabilities, with examples including face and object recognition, as well as voice command and response. Examples of using machine learning and simulation in the cloud to successfully train a robot to navigate through a new environment without writing a line of code will also be provided. In addition, drawing upon robotics experiences in fulfillment centers, he will discuss the role of the cloud to monitor, control and manage fleets of robots in production.
Time: 10:45 AM – 11:30 AM
Location: Amphitheater
Speaker: Dawn Tilbury, Head of the Directorate for Engineering, National Science Foundation and Professor University of Michigan
The Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier
Robots are moving into workplaces, replacing some people while helping others to accomplish their goals. NSF has been funding research in The Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier, with a goal of ensuring that the robots of the future are beneficial for both people and jobs. One of NSF’s Ten Big Ideas, the Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier will require cross-disciplinary and convergent research, as well as collaborations between universities and industries. Through these collaborations that will define and develop new technologies, we foresee significant progress being made on many important societal challenges.
Expo Hall
The Expo Hall will be open from 10:30 AM – 6:00 PM and features 70-plus exhibitors, including an International Robotics Pavilion that features the Robot Enterprise Promotion Association (REPA), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, the Consulate General of Canada in Boston, and MassRobotics.
On the show floor robotics engineers will find industry-leading companies such as Energid, Harmonic Drive, Kollmorgen, Maxon Precision Motors, Universal Robots, Waypoint Robotics and many more.
Festo will also be flying its eMotionButterflies and Bionicopter robot dragonfly in booth 116 throughout the day. Here’s a sneak preview of those robots in action:
Conference Sessions
The agenda at the Robotics Summit is tailored to the people building commercial robots. Four tracks cover tools and platforms, design and development, manufacturability and production, and research and markets.
Robotics engineers should pay close attention to the sessions and panels around actuators, the user interface, motion control, safety, and navigation and mapping.
Researchers will also be interested in content around user-centric design, production, machine learning, protecting intellectual property, and the Robot Operating System (ROS). Leading companies such as ASUS, Brain Corporation, Elmo Motion Control, Humatics, Intel will be represented.
Networking & Raffles
Day 1 of the Robotics Summit closes out with two networking receptions. The first takes place from 5-6 on the show floor. Then there’s a networking reception from 6-8 PM in the Harborview Ballroom called BotMix that is open to full conference attendees, sponsors, and speakers, as well as registered members of the media and analyst communities.
BotMix will feature live music, fun games, cool robots and raffles from Franklin Robotics, iRobot, NVIDIA, and Optimus Ride. iRobot will be raffling off a brand new Roomba s9+ robot vacuum. The s9+, which was introduced last week, uses iRobot’s iAdapt 3.0 Navigation with vSLAM to navigate a home and keep track of where it has and hasn’t been. It also features a square front, which is a new design for Roomba, of course, as all previous generations featured a circular shape.
Optimus Ride, a leading autonomous vehicle technology company located in Boston, is raffling off three autonomous vehicle demo rides. The demo rides, which will take place in Boston’s Seaport District, will be scheduled for a later date at a mutually convenient time. To enter the raffle, visit Optimus Ride in Booth 208 on the exhibition floor.
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