Ben is the CEO and co-founder of WiBotic, a company that develops wireless charging solutions and fleet-wide battery management software for industrial mobile platforms of all shapes and sizes. Their mission is to energize businesses with autonomous systems to grow and scale without limitation, while creating a workplace filled with brilliant people who are passionate about leadership. Ben has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington, where he worked on wireless power technologies for implanted devices and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and physics from Columbia.
Partnering with large corporations can accelerate growth, but navigating these relationships presents unique challenges. This session delivers actionable strategies for successfully collaborating with corporate partners. A startup and Industry leader share their perspectives on maximizing the value of these alliances, covering topics that include:
The Startup Perspective: Securing, structuring, and executing successful pilot programs and Proofs of Concept (POCs).
The Corporate Perspective: Inside strategies on how large enterprises evaluate, onboard, and collaborate with emerging startups.
Collaboration Best Practices: Bridging the gap between startup agility and corporate processes to ensure mutual success.
As robots move beyond controlled indoor environments and into agriculture, mining, construction, defense, ports, and critical infrastructure, the engineering challenges become significantly more demanding. Weather, dust, moisture, vibration, uneven terrain, and limited access to maintenance introduce failure modes rarely encountered during lab testing.
Drawing on years of experience supporting autonomous systems in some of the world's harshest environments, this panel will share practical lessons for designing, building, and deploying robots that can withstand real-world field conditions. Attendees will learn best practices for environmental hardening, power architecture, autonomous operations, charging infrastructure, reliability engineering, and long-term fleet maintenance.
Through real-world deployment examples, the session will demonstrate how engineering decisions impact reliability, uptime, operational efficiency, and total cost of ownership. Engineers will leave with practical strategies for building resilient robotic systems that can operate reliably despite exposure to rain, dust, extreme temperatures, vibration, and other environmental challenges.
