It is a golden age for robotics, driven by amazing amounts of compute available onboard, low cost hardware driven by smartphones, electric scooters, and smart appliances, and sixty years of AI advances.  And it is a time where robots are desperately needed as labor is short in manufacturing, warehouse/fulfilment, farming, construction, and many other industries.

Rodney Brooks has been a pioneer in robotics and AI in both academia and in six startups over the last 40+ years. His companies have shipped more robots than any others, and in four major product lines. Now at Robust.AI he and his teammates have developed a new class of mobile robots, driven by AI advances, that radically increase the productivity  of people employed in warehouses and manufacturing, by becoming their most valued tools and making their work much less physically demanding.

AI systems have to satisfy human users. Robots do too, but first they have to satisfy physics, and that is a much less forgiving requirement.  Brooks will explain how critical a physics based understanding of robots is to figuring out what it is they need to know about the world, and what they can learn from the world.  And he will lead you through what parts of that are long understood, what parts have just become possible to deploy with reliability, and what parts are still distant dreams.

Finally he will talk about why every physical robot class, from fully autonomous automobiles to home robot vacuums, has a much longer deployment ramp than products which are shipped over the network as ephemeral bits; ranging from reliability of operation, to supply chain vulnerability, to the costs of both underutilized or unavailable inventory.

Key Takeaways:

• The evolving role of robots in reshoring U.S. manufacturing and warehouse operations.
• How robots are already augmenting human workers in warehouses and what’s next for AI-powered automation.
• Practical insights into deploying hybrid automation models to address labor shortages and improve operational efficiency.
• Realistic timelines for fully automated warehouses and the gradual shift to more collaborative systems.