Industry Forum

The objective of the industry forum is to bring together a set of major industrial companies to present the key drivers, opportunities, and challenges as seen across different continents, use-cases and technologies. We have a distinguished set of participants that cover industrial applications, services, healthcare and home-services to provide a comprehensive view what drives industry executives and how academia can work with industry to generate future solutions.

Panel participants

Chair: Howie Choset, CMU

More information including biographies of the panelists can be found here

US National Robotics Programs

Many agencies are providing programs to support research in robotics. In this session program managers from multiple agencies provide a comprehensive view of research program in robotics and discuss how research can engage with different programs. The forum is organized early during ICRA to enable researchers to setup 1:1 meetings with the program managers during the conference.

US Program Presentations

1. The Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier: Core Research (FW-HTF) program: presented by Jordan Berg, ENG/CMMI.

2. Sunsetting of NRI-3.0 program -- Guidance for Researchers: presented by Juan Wachs, CISE/IIS, Erion Plaku, CISE/IIS, and Irina Dolinskaya, ENG/CMMI

3. The Foundational Research in Robotics (FRR) and other robotics-relevant NSF programs: presented by Irina Dolinskaya, ENG/CMMI, Erion Plaku, CISE/IIS, and Juan Wachs, CISE/IIS.

4. Joint NSF Q&A (Dolinskaya, Plaku, Wachs, and Berg)

Chair: Jeff Trinkle, Lehigh University

More information including biographies of the panelists can be found here

Investor/Venture Capital Forum

Investments in robotics are at an all-time high. Robots investments during 2021 was more than $10B including small scale ventures of say $5M and major efforts such as new SPACs with investments in excess of $4B. In this forum a number of experienced venture capitalists will address the question – what are interesting opportunities on the horizon across manufacturing, services, healthcare, logistics and transportation?.

Panel participants

Chair: Dan Kara, WTWH Media

More information including biographies of the panelists can be found here.

Start-up Forum

In a collaboration with IEEE RAS Industry Advisory Board (IAB) and incubators such as Silicon Valley Robotics, Mass Robotics, Pennovation, and Pittsburgh Robotics Network a set of companies are being invited to present their business plan and how they are going to market. The objectives are two-fold: present examples of early-stage start-ups, have them discuss ideas with venture capitalists and the broader audience. The final set of companies to be presented during this forum is still under discussion.

Panel participants

Chair: Andra Keay, Silicon Valley Robotics

More information including biographies of the panelists can be found here.

Future of Work Forum

The main theme of ICRA 2022 is the future of work. A key question that surfaces regularly is about the impact of automation on the future of employment. How is technology and new investment related to job growth or the reduction in employment? Do we know? Can we explain the relation between investments and new jobs? This forum will explore these questions and try to bring clarity to the discussion.

Panel participants

Chair: Henrik Christensen, UCSD

More information including biographies of the panelists can be found here.

Forum on Autonomous Driving

Over the last few years we have seen tremendous progress on autonomous driving. This is both in terms of autonomy in regular cars and in terms of micro-mobility services for local deliveries. There is a frequent discussion about “driver-less” cars and when we will get there. In this forum we have a number of companies that work on the autonomous driving at various levels of autonomy discuss - where are we today? what are the main challenges? and provide an outlook on the future.

Panel participants

Chair: Henrik Christensen, UCSD

More information including biographies of the panelists can be found here.