Sanjay Aggarwal

Over the last five years, the robotics industry has witnessed the rise and fall of autonomous vehicles as a category. At the same time, we’ve seen the emergence of a new category known as “vertical robotics,” where companies focus on industry-specific vertical use cases. Early successes have centered around logistics, defense and security, and medicine. The autonomous vehicles category yielded a better understanding of how to build successful robotics companies, and educated a new generation of experienced entrepreneurs and operators in the robotics space.

Aggarwal will discuss what to expect in the robotics industry in the coming five years, how it will continue to expand, with an increasing focus on vertical use cases, particularly in emerging fields like agriculture, construction, mining, food, and lab and pharma. In addition, Sanjay will discuss how the hurdles facing the autonomous vehicle industry and how M&A activity from incumbent OEMs will be a key indicator of success for vertical robotics.

The industry’s hottest robotics startups compete in the RoboBusiness Pitchfire Competition for a $5,000 first-place prize and eternal bragging rights. Five startups deliver 5-minute ‘pitches’ to a panel of judges describing their solution, business model, value proposition and more. Judges pick a winner and two runners-up based on the startup they believe to be best primed for commercial success. Participating startups receive invaluable feedback from investors, can network with industry leaders, get free passes to RoboBusiness and will appear on The Robot Report Podcast.