Rodney Brooks: Co-founder of iRobot and founder of Rethink Robotics, Brooks’ work has been instrumental in bringing robots into homes and factories. His insights often revolve around human-robot interactions and collaboration.
Daniela Rus: As the Director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Rus oversees innovations in drone fleets, robotic assistants, and self-driving cars. Her contributions have been pivotal in expanding the scope of what robots can achieve.
Melonee Wise: CEO of Fetch Robotics, Wise’s expertise lies in building robots for the logistics industry. She’s pushing the frontier on warehouse and cloud robotics.
Ken Goldberg: A professor at UC Berkeley, Goldberg combines robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence. He’s notably worked on cloud robotics and the dexterity of robotic grasping.
Sethu Vijayakumar: Holding a Chair in Robotics at the University of Edinburgh, Vijayakumar’s work on robot learning, autonomy, and human-robot collaboration is at the cutting edge. He’s also involved with the Honda ASIMO team, focusing on control and planning algorithms.
Ayanna Howard: With a focus on assistive robots, Howard, a professor at Georgia Tech, designs robots for therapy, education, and rehabilitation. She emphasizes creating robots that can adapt to humans, understanding and learning from our behaviors.
Mark Raibert: As the founder of Boston Dynamics, Raibert is behind some of the most advanced robots in the world, including Spot and BigDog. These robots’ mobility and adaptability are setting standards in the field.
Pieter Abbeel: Renowned for his work at UC Berkeley and as a co-founder of covariant.ai, Abbeel focuses on deep learning for robotics, particularly in areas like learning from demonstrations and reinforcement learning.
Hadas Kress-Gazit: Based at Cornell University, her research ensures that high-level robot instructions can be automatically turned into actions, ensuring robots can perform tasks without getting stuck or making errors.
Masayoshi Son: While more known as a business magnate leading SoftBank, Son’s vision drives significant investments in robotics companies like Boston Dynamics, emphasizing the synergy between AI and robotics.
