Chris Leck, Director of Futures Division, Ministry of Transport, Singapore

Singapore’s Vision for Autonomous Vehicle Deployment​

The presentation will give an overview of Singapore’s vision for the deployment of Autonomous Vehicles as well as of on-going Autonomous Vehicle trials in Singapore.

James Kuffner, CTO, Toyota Research Institute, USA

Cloud Robotics: Intelligent Machines in a Cloud-Connected World

The Automotive and Robotics industries are currently undergoing dramatic transformations. High-performance networking and cloud computing has radically altered how individuals and businesses manage data and computation. A new generation of cloud-enabled robots, a.k.a. "Cloud Robotics", is now poised to fundamentally disrupt the state-of-the-art in the development of intelligent machines. The long-term prospects for the future evolution of robot intelligence based on search, distributed computing, machine learning, and big data will enable future robotic systems to be more capable and useful.

Emilio Frazzoli, CTO, nuTonomy, Singapore

nuTonomy: Driving towards tomorrow

How is technology going to change mobility in the future? How will our lives and our cities change as autonomous cars become a reality? In this talk I will explain the vision that is being pursued by nuTonomy, for a future in which safe, reliable, and affordable mobility is provided to all through a fleet of autonomous shared vehicles, augmenting and complementing other transportation options.

Rosen Diankov, CTO, Mujin, Japan

Emergence of Intelligent Logistics Picking Systems

In the past year, the Mujin PickWorker product has succeeded in commercializing logistics picking tasks like depalletization, order fulfillment, item packing, palletization, random box picking, and conveyor tracking. All of these tasks involve tight sensor integration and require years of planning and testing edge cases to overcome all the challenges to achieve reliable, non-stop picking; in contrast, the Mujin PickWorker can be configured from scratch and become deployment ready within days.

Advanced robotics research is full of computer vision algorithms, motion planning algorithms, control methods, gripper designs, and overall architecture design ideas; unfortunately getting the right combination of these technologies to deliver a system for logistics is extremely hard. Many companies worldwide are rushing to commercialize intelligent picking systems, but the jury is still out on which methods are the best.

In this talk, I will present the Mujin product line-up, system capabilities, development methodologies, and how our team is pushing the state of art in intelligent logistics picking systems.

Tamanna Dahiya, Director of APAC Innovation Center, DHL Customers Solution & Innovation, Singapore

Robotics in Logistics: DPDHL Trend Study and Pilots​

The presentation will focus on near term and longer term use cases of robotics in logistics operations as summarized in DHL Trend study and the learnings from the pilots being conducted in this area.

Steve Cousins, CEO, Savioke, USA

The Business of Delivering Delivery Robots

Nearly four years ago a team from Willow Garage formed a new company with the purpose of deploying robots into the world to help people. Believing that the technology was ready, the market was open, and the investment community was finally willing to fund robotics, Savioke’s journey began. Today, Savioke is recognized for developing the Relay robot, the first delivery robot for hotels, that's proving to be valuable in many other indoor spaces as well. The company has raised a successful Series A round of funding, completed over 100,000 deliveries, and has installations in multiple market sectors including hospitality, logistics, and high rise residential. And that is just the beginning of the Savioke story.

Stefan Grufman, Teamleader Software & Signal team, Husqvarna Group, Sweden

Scaling Research to Consumer Products

The talk from Husqvarna will be about how we, you the researchers and we the company, can bridge the gap between research and industrialization. It is the task for companies such as Husqvarna to implement and utilize research results in products, but in some cases the gap is very large. As an example, when and how can machine learning be used in commercial products with requirements on safety? What have we done (result/ideas) and what can we do to bridge this gap in the future?

Selina Seah, ACEO, Changi General Hospital, Singapore

CHARTing Future Healthcare Delivery​

Globally, developed countries are facing changing demographics where their populations are rapidly ageing. The future of healthcare requires new initiatives to transform care whilst ensuring that productivity of workforce is upheld. This presentation discusses opportunities for adopting solutions such as robotics and automation from perspective of augmenting healthcare service providers’ daily operations and ensuring delivery of high standard of care for the general population.

Pushkar Hingwe, Director of Robotic Motion Control, Intuitive Surgical, USA

da Vinci Robotic Surgery Platform – A product development perspective

Robot assisted surgery is bringing the advantages of minimally invasive surgery to procedures that were previously done open. The technology pillars: 3d Vision, intuitiveness and dexterity work together to make an effective robotic surgery platform. Da Vinci Xi system has further enhanced the capability of robotic surgery. Some engineering challenges that needed to be overcome during Xi development will be presented as examples of the effort needed to offer compelling patient and surgeon value.

Yasuhiko Hashimoto, General Manager, Robot Division, Kawasaki Heavy Industry, Japan

Dual Arm Collaborative Robot "duAro" for SMEs in Singapore

Problems in Singapore SMEs such as cost, land and aging labour force are quite similar to Japan.
This presentation will focus on the proposal which solves current problems in Singapore SMEs with the collaborative robot based on our experience in Japan.

David Low, CEO, Advanced Remanufacturing Technology Centre (ARTC), Singapore

Keeping Pace with Technology Advancement and Disruption through Industry-led Public-private Partnership in Advanced Manufacturing R&D​

The demand for better quality, cost down, shorter lead times, customisation and better product performance is a common ground in the manufacturing world. To keep up to these demands, it is necessary to keep up to the pace of technology advancement that disrupts the status quo or risk being disrupted altogether. However, it is ever challenging and costly for companies to deliver every technology and innovation alone at the right timing. Furthermore, the solutions for advancement manufacturing cannot be delivered any single company anymore, particularly with the convergence of digital and mechanical solutions. This presentation shares the public-private partnership model at the Advanced Remanufacturing and Technology Centre (ARTC) of A*STAR, where it currently has 44 industry members working together to address a number of advanced manufacturing challenges.

Adrian Lim, Director of Education Sector, Sectoral Innovation Group, Info-communications Media Development Authority (IDMA), Singapore

Robots for Early Childhood Education​

Robots for Early Childhood Education was initiated by the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore to trial the use of social robots in complementing teaching and learning at the preschool. Robots in our daily life are becoming more prevalent, ranging from autonomous vehicles, industry robots and now social robots at home and in schools. Exposing age-appropriate technologies to the young and prepare them early is key for Singapore’s push to be the world’s first Smart Nation.

Two social robots were trialled at two preschools to study the practical aspects of using social robots for lessons. Observations on the experience and impact were studied during the trial through lesson designs around the area of collaborative play and interactive storytelling. The outcome of the trial shows children at the age 5-6 are very receptive to social robots in the classroom and this paves the way for future innovative lesson designs involving robots.

Sarah Zhang, Head of Developer Partnerships & Business Operations, Segway Robotics Inc., China

Bring Alive Our Dream Robot with the Developer Community​

The presentation will focus on (1) how and why we built Loomo, a robotic platform that is extendable both in terms of hardware and software; (2) how start-ups can bring alive their own dream robots by simply building apps on Loomo and achieve social impact/commercial success. 

• Loomo and our vision for Droid
• Extendibility is the key: hardware and software designs
• Win together through the developer program
• Apps built by BMW, MIT and more

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