Robots coupled with AI are already permeating our lives in a variety of ways: from consumer robots that clean our houses to industrial robots that make our cars; from robots that take care of our elderly to drones that fight our wars. Should we fear them? Probably not. But we need to better understand their impact on our work and future. Boston is the second fastest growing robotics technology cluster in the US. Join us for an afternoon of learning with leading experts. Our expert panel of robotics practitioners will educate you on the state of the technology and what the future holds. The MIT Cheetah is an example of what will be discussed.
Where:
Cambridge Innovation Center,
Havana Conf. room, 5th Floor,
1 Broadway, Cambridge MA
When:
Saturday, April 21st, 2018 1:45 PM – 5 PM
Panelists
Co-sponsored by MassRobotics
Space Courtesy CIC Cambridge
Tom Ryden
Marc Raibert
Sangbae Kim
Shiraj Sen
Krishna SriKrishna
Vivek Badami
Tom Ryden
Tom Ryden, Executive Director, MassRobotics
Prior to joining MassRobotics Mr. Ryden was the founder and CEO/COO of VGo Communications, Inc. While at VGo Mr. Ryden oversaw the development and launch of the VGo telepresence robot. The VGo is used by hospitals, eldercare facilities, schools and other organizations to help people stay better connected, allowing users to essentially be in two places at once.
Previously, Mr. Ryden was Director of Sales & Marketing at iRobot Corporation. Under his leadership iRobot secured over $300M in contracts and revenue from its government and industrial products increased from $2M to over $80M annually. In addition Mr. Ryden held roles in program management, overseeing the development of some of iRobot’s most successful products.
Mr. Ryden serves as the co-chairman of the robotics cluster of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council and is on the board of directors of AUVSI New England and the Robotics Technology Advisory Panel for ASME. Mr. Ryden has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Vermont and an MBA from Bentley University.
Marc Raibert
Founder and CEO of Boston Dynamics
Marc Raibert is founder and CEO of Boston Dynamics, a company that creates some of the world’s most advanced dynamic robots, such as BigDog, Atlas, Spot and Handle. These robots are inspired by the remarkable ability of animals to move with agility, dexterity, perception and intelligence. A key ingredient of these robots is their dynamic behavior, which contributes to their effectiveness and versatility in the real world. Before starting Boston Dynamics, Raibert was Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at MIT and Carnegie Mellon. While at CMU and MIT Raibert founded the Leg Laboratory, a lab that helped establish the scientific basis for highly dynamic robots and that set the stage for the work done at Boston Dynamics. Raibert is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Sangbae Kim
Sangbae Kim, Director of the Bio-mimetic Robotics Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Professor Kim’s research focuses on the bio-inspired robot design by extracting principles from animals. Kim’s achievements on bio-inspired robot development include the world’s first directional adhesive inspired from gecko lizards, and a climbing robot, Stickybot, that utilizes the directional adhesives to climb smooth surfaces featured in TIME’s best inventions in 2006. Recent achievement includes the development of the MIT Cheetah capable of stable outdoor running up to 13mph and autonomous jumping over obstacles at an efficiency of animals. This achievement was covered by more than 300 media articles. He is a recipient of best paper award from International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2007), King-Sun Fu Memorial Transactions on Robotics (2008) and IEEE/ASME transactions on mechatronics (2016), DARPA Young Faculty Award (2013), NSF CAREER award (2014), and Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Distinguished Teaching (2015).
Professor Kim has a Ph d and M.S. in robotics from Stanford University and a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from Yonsei University.
Shiraj Sen
Shiraj Sen, Lead scientist, GE Global Research
As part of the GE Robotics team, Sen is responsible for research, development, and deployment of real-world systems for aerial and ground robots. Since 2014, Sen has worked closely with customers and multi-disciplinary teams to shape robotics projects and products in the oil & gas, power, and transportation sectors. His main areas of interest include robot learning, robot planning, computer vision, and certification of autonomous systems. He has been actively involved in the creation of two new robotics-enabled businesses at GE and has filed over a dozen patent disclosures.
Prior to joining GE, Sen was a postdoctoral fellow in the UMass Amherst College of Information and Computer Sciences Robotics Lab and worked with NASA to develop robotic learning techniques, including teaching robots to make decisions under uncertainty. He recently continued his work with NASA, winning second place in the agency’s Space Robotics Challenge. The competition tasked teams with developing software to increase the autonomy of NASA’s R5 robots so they can complete specific tasks during space travel or after landing on other planets.
Sen earned a B.S. in mathematics and computing from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur in 2004 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2007 and 2012, respectively.
Krishna SriKrishna
Krishna Srikrishna, Sr. Member of Technical Staff. iRobot
Krishna has more than 20 years of engineering leadership experience developing innovative high-volume products with leading-edge technology. Krishna is passionate about productizing robotics technology and he has been successful at de-risking product launch by leveraging pragmatic solutions that deliver tangible business value. He has been at iRobot for the past 8 years where he led software development teams working on cloud connected Roombas with smart home autonomous navigation and mapping technology. He has worked in many industries including consumer robotics, internet of things (IOT), RFID and data storage industries. Krishna has a Ph. D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to that he earned a Masters from The Ohio State University and a B. Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology.
Vivek Badami
Vivek Badami, Consulting Engineer, General Electric (Panel Moderator)
Vivek is responsible for new sensor technology development at GE Aviation. He has over 40 years’ experience in sensors, Monitoring & Diagnostics, Prognostics & Health Monitoring, & automation technologies in a variety of products and process applications in the Energy and Aviation space. He has subject matter expertise in a variety of sensor technologies, data acquisition, algorithms & architectures. He has 51 patents in these technologies.
Vivek earned his Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Masters in Robotics from the University of Rhode Island, and PhD in Intelligent Systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
