The developer conference for people who build robots.

Jim Fan

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Research Scientist NVIDIA

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Dr. Jim Fan is the co-Lead of Generalist Embodied Agent Group (GEAR) at NVIDIA. GEAR’s mission is to build generally capable Physical AI. Dr. Fan’s team is spearheading Project GR00T, NVIDIA’s moonshot initiative at building the AI brain for humanoid robotics. Previously, Dr. Fan obtained his Ph.D. degree at Stanford Vision Lab. His publications have won several awards and nominations, including the Outstanding Paper Award at NeurIPS 2022. He spearheaded multiple impactful works on robot foundation models, AI gamers that play Minecraft proficiently, and general-purpose agents that learn to operate a computer. His works have been widely featured in news media, such as New York Times, Forbes, MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, The WIRED, VentureBeat, etc.

Kyle Vogt

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CEO The Bot Company

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Kyle Vogt is the Founder and CEO of The Bot Company, a robotics startup making affordable household robots. He previously founded Cruise, which was sold to GM for $1 billion and ultimately completed 250,000 driverless rides. Previously, Vogt was a cofounder of Twitch. He studied Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at MIT.

Jamie Shotton

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Chief Scientist Wayve

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Jamie leads Wayve’s Science department, where he guides our research teams to unlock new research breakthroughs, to enable those breakthroughs to have meaningful impact for the business, and to disrupt both our technical and business strategy to ensure Wayve stays at the forefront of innovation. Before Wayve, Jamie was Partner Director of Science at Microsoft and Head of the Mixed Reality & AI Labs, where he shipped foundational features for Microsoft’s Kinect (Microsoft’s line of motion sensing input devices) and the hand- and eye-tracking that enable HoloLens 2’s interaction model (smart glasses). With a PhD in computer vision from the University of Cambridge, Jamie is a highly accomplished researcher and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2021.

Sergey Levine

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Co-Founder Physical Intelligence

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Sergey Levine is an Associate Professor at UC Berkeley and co-founder of Physical Intelligence, which focuses on developing robotic foundation models. He received a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2009, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2014. He joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley in fall 2016. His work focuses on machine learning for decision making and control, with an emphasis on deep learning and reinforcement learning algorithms. Applications of his work include autonomous robots and vehicles, as well as applications in other decision-making domains. His research includes developing algorithms for end-to-end training of deep neural network policies that combine perception and control, scalable algorithms for inverse reinforcement learning, deep reinforcement learning algorithms, and more. In 2024, he co-founded Physical Intelligence (Pi), which aims to develop a general-purpose robotic foundation model.

Liyiming Ke

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Member of Technical Staff Physical Intelligence

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Liyiming Ke is a full stack robotist at Physical Intelligence researching on Machine Learning for Robot Manipulation. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Washington with her thesis titled "Data-driven Fine Manipulation". She built a chopsticks-welding robot that demonstrate fine motor skills and developed theoretical frameworks for robot learning. She has led human-robot interactive demonstration at AAAS in 2020 and has been selected as one of the Rising Stars in EECS 2023.

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Jason Ma

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Co-founder Dyna Robotics

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Jason Ma is co-founder at Dyna Robotics. He received his PhD from University of Pennsylvania, where he studied scalable reinforcement learning algorithms and foundation models for robot learning. His research has been recognized with honors such as RSS Pioneers, Apple and OpenAI Fellowship, Best Paper Finalist at ICRA 2024, Top 10 NVIDIA Research Projects of 2023, and covered by popular media such as the Economist, Fox, Yahoo, and TechCrunch.

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RJ Scaringe

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Founder & CEO Rivian

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RJ Scaringe founded Rivian in 2009 to help accelerate the world’s shift toward carbon neutral energy and transportation. Since starting Rivian from a clean sheet, he’s led the company to establish its vertically integrated technology platforms, build multi-program manufacturing capabilities, develop meaningful partnerships and set forth a strategic vision that transcends the profound change we’ll see within the transportation industry over the next few decades. An engineer at heart, RJ has meticulously built a diverse team obsessed with tackling hard problems while fostering an environment that rewards courage, creativity and teamwork. He operates from the belief that the only way to build the kind of world our kids’ kids deserve is through collaboration, not only within organizations, but also across industries and society. Today, Rivian develops and manufactures electric vehicles and charging infrastructure for the consumer and commercial markets. Rivian’s nearly $14 billion IPO in 2021 was the largest worldwide since 2014. Rivian’s first consumer products, the R1T and R1S, have received critical acclaim, including the R1T named MotorTrend’s Truck of the Year for 2022; and both the R1T and R1S earning the highest safety rating of Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) for 2023 and 2024. Most recently, Rivian was named the Best Luxury Brand of 2024 by US News and World Report. Rivian is also currently fulfilling Amazon's order for 100,000 electric delivery vans—the largest single order for commercial EVs ever placed.

Vinny Senthil

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Senior Software Engineer Chef Robotics

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Vinny leads platform software engineering at Chef Robotics, the first company to commercialize a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. As an early hire, Vinny built out core infrastructure that enabled Chef to scale from prototypes to robots delivering over 50 million servings in production, helping industry-leading food companies increase volume and meet growing demand. Prior to his time at Chef, Vinny worked on developer platforms at Google Cloud, helping launch Vertex AI and co-authoring its Python SDK which now sees over a million daily downloads.

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Dennis Siedlak

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CTO / Founder Slip Robotics

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Dennis Siedlak is the CTO and co-founder of Slip Robotics, the Atlanta-based company revolutionizing trailer loading with mobile robots that can load or unload any semi in five minutes. Slip recently raised a $28M Series B led by DCVC and serves Fortune 500 manufacturers like John Deere, GE Appliances, and Nissan.

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Dennis earned his Ph.D. in aerospace systems design from Georgia Tech before building autonomous systems at The Aerospace Corporation, Volley Automation, and Waymo. At Slip, he leads engineering and data science, turning billions of telemetry points into safer, faster robot-as-a-service deployments. He holds multiple patents in robotic mobility and specializes in scaling hardware-software systems from prototype to 24/7 operations.

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Heidi Schubert

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Director of Software and Autonomy Cobot

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Heidi leads the Software and Autonomy team at Cobot to make Proxie trustworthy and adaptable. She has more than 20 years of experience developing software solutions to challenging problems. Previous roles include leading the Amazon Prime Air Drone ground station team and leading the autonomy software for Amazon Astro. Heidi has a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the Stanford Aerospace Robotics Lab.

Jess Clarke

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Director of Deployment Success Cobot

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A highly skilled program manager with a specialization in robotics and systems deployment. Jess excels in creating scalable processes, implementing automation technology, and optimizing supply chain operations. She has a strong customer-facing background, having worked at 6 River Systems/Shopify, Home Depot, and Manhattan Associates. In her most recent role at 6 River Systems, she established a technical operations PMO, driving standardization and process improvement, while overseeing a global portfolio of 100+ robotic deployments, showcasing her expertise in managing complex projects. Jess brings this experience to Cobot, as Director of Deployment Success overseeing all field implementations of Proxie.

Rajesh Radhakrishnan

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Senior Director, Head of Autonomy Serve Robotics

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Rajesh Radhakrishnan is an AI and robotics leader with over 15 years’ experience spanning agricultural robotics, biotech, human–computer interaction, and mobility. He was the first co-founding engineer at Blue River Technology, where he built breakthrough AI and computer-vision technology that led to the largest-ever agricultural robotics acquisition by John Deere. At John Deere, Rajesh held multiple leadership roles and was part of the founding team that started the autonomous tractor group, scaling it from just six people to a major business unit and launching the company’s first autonomous tractors to market in three years. Today, he spearheads last-mile delivery innovation at Serve Robotics (Nasdaq: SERV) while advising and investing in emerging robotics startups.

Chris Walti

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Founder/CEO Mytra

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Chris is the CEO and co-founder of Mytra, a robotics company developing a universal material flow system for warehousing and manufacturing. Automating material flow addresses 80% of the work in warehousing and 30% of the work in manufacturing. In 2 years Mytra has developed and launched to production their class-leading system, earned multiple large scale contracts from Tier 1 customers, and secured 3 rounds of funding totaling $78M led by Eclipse and Greenoaks. Prior to Mytra Chris spent 7 years at Tesla. Most recently he was the first leader of Tesla’s Optimus/Humanoid robotics company where in a year he built the initial team and first 2 prototypes, including a walking robot within the first 3 months. Prior to Optimus he led Tesla’s mobile robotics team developing internal products for material conveyance and automated logistics, led the deployment of the automated material conveyance system for Model 3 General Assembly (the #2 bottleneck for Model 3 ramp), and led product for Tesla’s Supercharger (charging infrastructure) team. Prior to Tesla Chris founded a venture-backed software company acquired by Raise.com in 2014. He spent his first 8 years bringing new products to market in renewable energy at Acciona and at Accenture. Chris has an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds six patents across robotics and energy domains.

Deepak Pathak

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Co-founder & CEO Skild AI

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Deepak Pathak is CEO & Co-Founder of Skild AI and Professor at Carnegie Mellon University working on developing an AI foundation model for robotics. He is known for pioneering contributions to AI including self-supervised learning, artificial curiosity and sim2real adaptation for robot learning. Deepak has received several prestigious honors including Sloan Fellow, MIT TR 35under35, Okawa Fellow, IIT Kanpur Young Alumnus Award and multiple Best Paper Awards. Deepak's research has been featured in popular press outlets, including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Quanta Magazine, Washington Post, CNET, Wired, and MIT Technology Review among others. Earlier, he received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and his Bachelor's from IIT Kanpur with a Gold Medal in Computer Science.

Boris Sofman

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Co-founder & CEO Bedrock Robotics

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Boris Sofman is the co-founder and CEO of Bedrock Robotics, an SF-based company focused on enabling fully self-operating heavy machinery (enabled by a fairly inexpensive upfit) to drive improvements in the cost, schedule, safety, and predictability of projects. Before Bedrock Robotics, Boris was an executive at Waymo, where he led autonomous trucking as well as key core technologies in the push to launch autonomous cars to the public in the Waymo One ride-hailing network. Waymo robo-taxis have driven over 50 million driverless miles across 4 cities at superhuman levels of safety. Previously, Boris co-founded and led Anki, a consumer robotics company known for its innovative entertainment products. Boris holds a PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.

Adrian Macneil

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Co-founder & CEO Foxglove

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Adrian Macneil is the CEO and co-founder of Foxglove, a company dedicated to increasing the GDP of robotics through foundational tools and infrastructure. Foxglove’s powerful visualization and data management accelerates robotics development from prototype to production. Prior to founding Foxglove, Adrian was the Director of Infrastructure Engineering at Cruise, where he helped scale from the first prototypes to hundreds of vehicles on the road.

Vamshi Konduri

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Principal Specialist, Robotics Amazon Web Services

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Vamshi Konduri is a principal specialist in robotics at AWS and works on enabling robotic solutions across customers, partners, robot companies and enterprise customers. With prior experience in startups and large organizations, Vamshi is able to bring a perspective from most persona’s in robotics. Vamshi holds a Master’s degree in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.

Guillaume Binet

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Founder Copper Robotics

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Guillaume Binet, Founder of Copper Robotics, brings 25 years of tech experience, with 10 years focused on robotics. Before founding Copper Robotics, he was the CTO at Skyways (drones), VP of CORE Platforms at Motional (autonomous driving), and VP of Onboard Infrastructure at Argo AI (autonomous driving). When Guillaume is not working heads down on his startup, he likes to restore old electronics (family computers and pinballs), scuba dive and race cars.

Guillaume Binet

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Co-Founder and Head of Technology Reframe Systems

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Felipe Polido is the Co-Founder and Head of Technology at Reframe Systems and is on a mission to build climate-resilient homes for all. He leads development of the next-generation manufacturing engine that merges digital-twin first design, physical AI, and advanced automation. With an M.S. in Robotics and over 20 patent applications and publications, Felipe has spent more than a decade advancing manipulation, machine vision, and motion planning technologies. Prior to Reframe, he was part of the DARPA Robotics Challenge humanoid program and spearheaded Amazon Robotics’ Sparrow solution for automated bin-picking. Passionate about design simplification at scale, Felipe’s mission is to build robotic systems that connect cutting-edge research with real-world applications.

Ethan Keller

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Design Automation Lead Reframe Systems

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Ethan’s career sits at the intersection of computation, design, and manufacturing. He currently leads development of a design automation pipeline at Reframe Systems, where he’s helping bring modular building systems to life through scalable, model-driven design tools.

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Prior to Reframe, Ethan spent five years at Onshape as a software development engineer, contributing to both the API and PartStudio teams. His experience building with and for Onshape gives him a unique perspective on how cloud-native CAD can power the next generation of automation.

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Outside of work, Ethan has spent over a decade volunteering with AguaClara Reach as their technical advisor. There, he developed an automated system for designing gravity-fed drinking water treatment plants within Onshape, supporting clean water access in communities throughout Central America.

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