Keynote Presentations
RoboDevelopment Conference & Exposition featured keynote presentations from the world's most renowned industry leaders.
| | SEBASTIAN THRUN Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Director, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Stanford University |
MAKING CARS DRIVE THEMSELVES
Tuesday, November 18, 9:00am
In this inspirational keynote session, Sebastian Thrun introduced the RoboDevelopment audience to the fascinating world of robotics cars. Most of us use cars in our daily lives, yet cars are inefficient, unsafe, and environmentally wasteful. Robotic technology promises to overcome some of these shortcomings, by making cars safer, drivers more productive, and also by reducing the burden to the environment by enabling new models of car sharing. Thrun presented Stanford's research on the basic artificial intelligence behind this new emerging technology. In particular, he reported from two recent autonomous car competitions, organized by DARPA, and dubbed "Grand Challenge" and "Urban Challenge." Machine perception, computer vision, machine learning, and probabilistic computation all play major roles in the design of these systems. Thrun shed light onto the inner workings of these robots and discuss the impact of self-driving cars on society once the technology is sufficiently matured.
| | MAJA J. MATARIC Founding Director USC Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems Director USC Robotics Research Lab |
Robots Among Us? -- Inventing the Future of Socially Assistive Robotics
Tuesday, November 18, 10:00am
As robots are moving from factories and labs into hospitals, schools, and homes, socially assistive robotics technology has the potential to meet major societal needs and revolutionize the way we live. It may help us to regain autonomy after stroke and traumatic brain injury, aid in the socialization of children with autism and other developmental and social disorders, create customized education and health-care, prolong our ability to age at home, and even delay the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's disease. This session discussed the vision, challenges, state-of-the-art, and directions for socially assistive robotics as a major emerging robotics trend.
| | MICHAEL BRUCH Section Head, Unmanned Systems Branch Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Center |
Opportunities in the Defense and Security Robotics Sector
Wednesday, November 19, 9:00am
The Department of Defense has a strong interest in employing unmanned systems in all aspects of its many missions. The general mantra is that robots will be used for dull, dirty and dangerous work, which includes most of the jobs in the military. Examples include improvised explosive device (IED) disposal, physical security, force protection, tunnel reconnaissance, aircraft refueling, automated transportation, and more. As the DoD increasingly moves towards the use of robots there are many opportunities for private industry to provide new and innovative solutions. This session addressed some of the current DoD robotic programs, technology gaps, and avenues for private industry to become involved in filling those gaps.
| | JEANNE DIETSCH CEO MobileRobots Inc |
OPPORTUNITIES AT THE UPTICK
Wednesday, November 19, 10:00am
Technology-watchers have been holding their breath for the moment when robots morph from toddling prototypes into robust products for 24X7 use. That moment is now, as some of the silicon-based staff of MobileRobots Inc demonstrated.
As participants in the birth of the autonomous service robot industry, we scanned the foreseeable opportunities, as well as discuss the pitfalls MobileRobots has encountered over its 13 years of robot development. We looked at how the current economic climate and the potential for ROI demand deep problem knowledge from application developers. We perused the pluses and minuses of strategies developers may choose from. And we took a look at how key alliances may line up as growth of the mobile robot industry shifts into second gear.
| | TANDY TROWER General Manager Microsoft |
BREAKFAST KEYNOTE: MICROSOFT AND ROBOTICS - 2008 UPDATE
Tuesday, November 18, 8:00am
At RoboBusiness 2006, Microsoft first entered the robotics market with the preview of Microsoft Robotics Studio, a platform and toolset designed to provide a common ground and catalyst for application development for wide variety of users and robot hardware. Released to the Web in December of that same year, Microsoft then followed with a new 1.5 release in July 2007 which included a number of new features and enhancements. With a user base of more than 250,000 users worldwide and over 60 supporting third party hardware and software vendors, Microsoft continues to improve its commitment to further address the growing needs of the emerging robotics community. Microsoft General Manager, Tandy Trower, will describe exciting new things are coming up in the product.