It’s an exciting time to be in robotics. The $100+ billion global robotics sector has been growing by leaps and bounds. Industrial robots are no longer the exclusive domain of heavy industry or huge factories. A new generation of robotics systems, collaborative robots in particular, have expanded the customer base for robots to include mid-sized and even small businesses for manufacturing, materials handling, fulfillment, and beyond.
The Covid-19 pandemic has raised the awareness of the value that robots can provide, but it has also highlighted the limitations of today’s robotics systems, and the challenges that must be overcome before robots are deployed in large numbers. Thankfully, researchers are devising ways to make robots more perceptive and dexterous. New technologies are also being developed that allow robots to sense the world in ways that are far beyond human capabilities, and this sensing is supported and augmented by human-like cognitive abilities.
In this farsighted and wide-ranging keynote session, MassRobotics and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative have brought together a world-class team of robotics researchers and industry veterans that will describe these ongoing initiatives and their impact on the commercial robotics sector. The session will include a series of rapid-fire presentations and demonstrations designed to give attendees a peak into a variety of areas of robotics research, ranging across the greater robotics landscape, from autonomous vehicles to autonomous surgery, and everything in between.
Speakers:
- Tom Ryden, Executive Director, MassRobotics
- Carl Vause
- Holly Yanco, Distinguished University Professor, Director of the NERVE Center, UMass Lowell
- Greg Fischer, Professor of Robotics Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
- Taskin Padir, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University
- David Barrett, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Olin College
- Richard Nuckols, Research Associate in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering, Wyss Institute, Harvard John A. Paulsen School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
- Matthias Scheutz, Professor, Computer Science, Director of the Human-Robot Interaction Lab, Tufts University
- Alireza Ramezani, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University