2026 Robotics Summit: “The Next 25 Years of Robotics” Co-sponsored by UPenn GRASP Lab & NSF TILOS

*Registration is required for this event and will be on a first come first serve basis. Capacity is limited.*

Confirmed Panelists for the event:

Pulkit Agrawal – Associate Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Co-Founder, Eka Robotics
Vivan Amin – Director of Research Incubations & Technical PM, Microsoft Research
Charlie Andersen – CEO, Burro
Manmohan Chandraker – Professor, University California San Diego; Department Head, NEC Laboratories America
Henrik Christensen – Distinguished Professor, University California San Diego; Faculty Member, TILOS
Vivian Chu – Co-founder, Diligent Robotics
Anthony Cowley – Staff Engineer, Serve Robotics
Dieter Fox – Professor, University of Washington; Senior Research Director, Allen Institute for AI
Kris Hauser – Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Head of Robotic Intelligence, Samsung Research America
Eric Krotkov – President, EK Consulting AI
Giuseppe Loianno – Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Jason Ma – Co-Founder, DYNA
Samuel Reeves – Founder & CEO, FORT Robotics
Al Rizzi – CTO, The RAI Institute
Vikas Sindhwani – Research Scientist, Google DeepMind
John Spletzer – VP of Robotics, Seegrid
Peter Tu – Distinguished Technical Fellow, GE Aerospace Research
Parris Wellman – Vice President, Engineering & Robotics at Amazon Robotics

Schedule:
8:30 AM – Check-In
9:00 AM – Welcome & Intro
9:30 AM – The New R&D Lifecycle (Panelists: Henrik Christensen, Kris Hauser, Eric Krotkov, Giuseppe Loianno, John Spletzer; Moderator: Dr. Ani Hsieh)
10:30 AM – The Foundation Model Era In Robotics (Panelists: Manmohan Chandraker, Dieter Fox, Jason Ma, Vikas Sindhwani; Moderator: Dr. Eric Eaton)
11:30 AM – Spotlight Talks (Speakers: Charlie Andersen, Jason Ma, Samuel Reeves, Parris Wellman)
12:15PM – Break for Lunch
1:40 PM – Robotics for Good (Panelists: Vivan Amin, Charlie Andersen, Vivian Chu, Anthony Cowley, Samuel Reeves; Moderator: Dr. Rachel Holladay)
2:40 PM – Poster and Demo Session (AGH 105 A&B)
4:10 PM – The Hardware Bottleneck (Panelists: Pulkit Agrawal, Al Rizzi, Peter Tu, Parris Wellman; Moderator: Dr. Michael Posa)
5:10 PM – Spotlight Talk (Kris Hauser)
5:30 PM – Closing Comments

This event is part of AI Month at Penn! Check out the calendar for a full list of events across campus.