From Demo to Deployment: Putting Robots to Work in the Real World
A robot demo runs once, in a room somebody controlled, with an engineer standing by to catch it when it fails. Deployment means the same robot working every day, in a building the company does not own, next to people who did not build it. This panel is about the distance between those two, and what it actually takes to cross it.
We have four people on stage who have shipped robots into the field. Rodney Brooks co-founded iRobot and Rethink Robotics, spent over twenty years as a professor at MIT, and is now co-founder and CTO of Robust AI. Aaron Edsinger is co-founder and CEO of Hello Robot, which builds Stretch, a mobile manipulator now in homes and research labs. Adrien Gaidon is co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Walden Robotics, and before that he led machine learning research at Toyota Research Institute. Ge Yang is co-founder of FortyFive Labs and a postdoc at MIT working on robot learning. Calvin Chin, Managing Partner at E14 Fund, is moderating, and will bring the investor read on where money in physical AI is actually going.
Agenda
6:30 - 7:00 PM: Welcome Reception & Dinner
7:00 - 8:00 PM: Panel Discussion: From Robot Demo to Real-World Deployment
8:00 - 9:00 PM: Networking
The evening starts at 6:30 pm with a welcome reception, runs an hour of panel from 7:00 pm, and closes with an hour of networking. We are hosting at SoMa ProtoLab, a robotics-themed event and maker space at 1070 Bryant St in San Francisco.
Please share the IVYPLUS members code: IVYPLUS28 for IVY+ alumni to get the same discounted price as MITCNC members ($30).
Space is limited to 60 attendees, so register early to save your spot!
MIT and Stanford alumni in the Bay Area are all welcome, whether you build robots or are just trying to understand the space.
Click Here To Register
Meet our panelists
Rodney Brooks, co-founder and CTO, Robust AI
Rodney Brooks is co-founder and CTO of Robust AI. He spent over twenty years as a professor at MIT, where he directed the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and he co-founded iRobot, which made the Roomba, and Rethink Robotics. He has argued for a long time that robots should work alongside people rather than replace them.
Aaron Edsinger, co-founder and CEO, Hello Robot
Aaron Edsinger is co-founder and CEO of Hello Robot, which builds Stretch, a lightweight mobile manipulator used in homes, care settings and research labs. He did his PhD in robotics at MIT. Before Hello Robot he co-founded Meka Robotics and Redwood Robotics, both of which Google acquired, and he went on to lead a robotics engineering team there.
Adrien Gaidon, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Walden Robotics
Adrien Gaidon is co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Walden Robotics, which came out of stealth recently. Before that he led machine learning research at Toyota Research Institute, working on perception and learning for autonomy, and he has taught at Stanford. His PhD is in computer vision and he has published widely on learning for robotics.
Ge Yang, co-founder, FortyFive Labs
Ge Yang is co-founder of FortyFive Labs and a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. His work covers robot learning and the simulation pipelines used to train embodied agents, and he focuses on the gap between what a robot learns in simulation and what it can do reliably once it is in a real room.
Calvin Chin, Managing Partner, E14 Fund (Moderator)
Calvin Chin is Managing Partner at E14 Fund, the venture fund that grew out of the MIT Media Lab community, where he invests in early stage deep tech and hardware. He is moderating the panel and will bring the investor read on what makes a robotics company fundable, and on where a good demo stops being enough.
Event Contact(s):
Kar Shin Cheo: karshin@mit.edu
Yijia Yang: yijia688@mit.edu
Dan Rahill: danfrahill@gmail.com