Deepu Talla, VP and GM, Autonomous Machines, NVIDIA
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.

Roger Barga, General Manager, AWS Robotics and Autonomous Services, Amazon Web Services
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.

Dawn Tilbury, Head of the Directorate for Engineering, National Science Foundation and Professor University of Michigan
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.

Henrik Christensen, Qualcomm Chancellor’s Chair of Robot Systems, UC San Diego and Director, Institute for Contextual Robotics
Over the last decade we have witnessed tremendous progress on robotics. Collaborative robotics has come of age, vision is finally viable as a feedback modality, grippers have moved beyond parallel kinematics, and so on. We have also seen major advances in modern machine learning techniques, modern control theory and human-robot interaction. But what does the future hold for the robotics sector, and where can opportunities be found? To answer exactly those questions, governments and business development groups often turn to technology roadmaps – formal documents generated every few years by a combination of experts from business, academia and government that systematically describe goals for research, technology, products, applications and industries, and outline the most efficient and economic path to those goals, including hurdles that must be overcome. In this keynote session, Henrik Christensen, Qualcomm Chancellor’s Chair in Robot Systems and Director, Contextual Robotics Institute at UC San Diego, will describe the development of the current US National Robotics Roadmap, and discuss both emerging robotics business cases and significant R&D challenges.

Lou Amadio & Cyra Richardson, Microsoft
The Internet of Things (IoT) has been transformational to many businesses. The insights gained through instrumentation and digitization are improving efficiency and increasing margins. The next step is to close the loop through robotics and autonomous systems. In this keynote presentation, Microsoft’s Lou Amadio, Principal Software Architect, and Cyra Richardson, General Manager Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Incubation, will describe how a host of cloud and edge IoT solutions can be used collectively to bring your robotics and automation solutions to market.

Dev Singh, Director of Business Development, Qualcomm Technologies
5G is being described as a once-in-a-generation technological advent. The massive capacity, ultra-low latency, and high reliability of 5G communications will enable entire new ecosystems of connected technologies to flourish. In the field of robotics, this will mean everything from highly precise industrial robots that can be controlled wirelessly or even remotely, to coordinated fleets of small consumer robots in the household. With the introduction of 5G into robotics technology, our robots can become smarter, more capable, and more efficient than ever before. Dev Singh, Qualcomm Technologies Inc.’s Director of Business Development for Robotics, will discuss just how 5G will enable this new generation of connected robots.