Keynote Presentations
RoboDevelopment Conference & Exposition features keynote presentations from the world's most renowned industry leaders.
The following keynote presentations have been confirmed for the 2008 conference program. Additional presentations will be announced in the coming weeks.
| | SEBASTIAN THRUN Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Director, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Stanford University |
MAKING CARS DRIVE THEMSELVES
In this inspirational keynote session, Sebastian Thrun will introduce 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 will present Stanford's research on the basic artificial intelligence behind this new emerging technology. In particular, he will report 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 will 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.
Click here for speaker bio.
MAYA J. MATARIC
Founding Director
USC Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems
Director
USC Robotics Research Lab
More information on this keynote presentation to follow.
| | JEANNE DIETSCH CEO MobileRobots Inc |
OPPORTUNITIES AT THE UPTICK
Technology watchers have been holding their breath in anticipation of the moment when robots morph from toddling prototypes into robust products. That moment is now. Applications have been tested and accepted. Early adopters – and their accounting departments – are enthusiastically tallying ROI and rushing deployments enterprise-wide. Robot manufacturers are turning their attention from the struggle for reference accounts to the scramble to nail down production resources. In this keynote session, Jeanne Dietsch, CEO of Mobile Robots Inc., will discuss various strategies that technical professionals, key participants in the birth of the autonomous service robot industry, can employ to optimize robotics opportunities and avoid potential pitfalls. She will also discuss how allegiances can foster growth of individual companies and the industry at large.
Click here for speaker bio.