Mike Oitzman is Senior Editor of The Robot Report and founder of the Mobile Robot Guide. Oitzman is a robotics industry veteran with 25-plus years of experience at various high-tech companies in the roles of marketing, sales and product management. He can be reached at [email protected].
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.
Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) has become a popular path to market for commercial robotics, but building a successful RaaS business requires far more than offering a subscription model. From pricing and financing to fleet management, customer support, and service-level agreements, companies must balance recurring revenue with the operational realities of deploying robots in the field.
In this session, experienced robotics leaders will share best practices for launching, operating, and scaling a successful RaaS business. Learn how to structure contracts, price services, define customer success metrics, manage maintenance and uptime, and determine when RaaS is the right fit—or when a traditional capital purchase model makes more sense. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for building sustainable RaaS offerings that deliver value for both robotics providers and their customers. Speakers to be announced soon.
Humanoid robots have captured the world's attention, attracting billions in investment and generating excitement about the future. But beyond the viral videos and ambitious promises, where does the technology really stand?
This keynote brings together industry leaders to examine the current state of humanoids through the lens of real-world deployment. The discussion will explore the capabilities humanoids are delivering today, the technical and operational challenges that remain, and the lessons emerging from early industrial implementations. Panelists will also address key topics including safety, standards, economics, and the milestones that must be reached before humanoids can achieve widespread adoption across manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics.
Attendees will leave with a clear, practical understanding of where humanoids create value today and what it will take for the technology to scale.
A model that performs well in simulation is an important milestone. But it is not proof that a robot is ready for the real world.
The hardest challenges in Physical AI emerge when learned behaviors encounter changing environments, imperfect sensors, limited compute, and unexpected edge cases. This panel will explore what it takes to bridge the gap between training and deployment, including the engineering disciplines required to build reliable robotic systems.
Experts will discuss how teams are addressing challenges across perception, decision-making, and manipulation to create robots that can operate safely and predictably outside the lab.
