RoboBusiness, which takes place Oct. 15-16 in Santa Clara, Calif., will feature the inaugural Physical AI Forum. It will touch on a range of topics about the emergence of physical AI, including conversations around safety and AI, simulation-to-reality reinforcement training, data curation, deploying AI-powered robots, and more.
RoboBusiness is the premier event for developers and suppliers of commercial robots. The event is produced by WTWH Media, which also produces The Robot Report, Automated Warehouse, and the Robotics Summit & Expo.
This year’s conference will also feature more than 60 speakers, a startup workshop, the annual Pitchfire competition, and numerous networking opportunities. RoboBusiness will include a track on surgical robotics. Over 100 exhibitors on the show floor will showcase their latest enabling technologies, products, and services to help solve your robotics development challenges.
Here is a look at the schedule of the Physical AI Forum at RoboBusiness.
Day 1 of the Physical AI Forum
Opening Keynote: Physical AI for the New Era of Robotics
Speaker: Deepu Talla, VP of Robotics and Edge AI, NVIDIA
Day|Time: October 15 | 9:30 AM – 10:15 AM
The big bang of generative AI for the physical world is here. Physical AI, where models can perceive, reason, and act in real-world environments, is redefining what’s possible in robotics. This shift moves us beyond static, rule-based automation toward adaptable, intelligent autonomy—capable of handling the complexity of unstructured and high-variation tasks. NVIDIA, together with a vibrant ecosystem of hardware, software, and robotics partners, is accelerating this transition. Through simulation-first development, foundation models, and real-time edge deployment, the next generation of robots is being trained in virtual worlds and scaled seamlessly into physical ones. This is more than a technological breakthrough—it’s the beginning of a new era where intelligent machines help power the $50 trillion global economy.
How Multi-Model Decision Agents Improve Performance, Safety, Scale
Speaker: Robert Sun, Founding Engineer, Dexterity
Day/Time: October 15 | 11:30 AM – 12:15 PM
Explore how Dexterity’s Physical AI platform enables warehouse robots to handle complex tasks at scale. By combining industrial “superhumanoid” robots with multimodal AI, Dexterity builds systems that learn from diverse sensor inputs – vision, force, audio, and proprioception – to model the physical world and adapt in real time. Learn how a multi-model learning approach, paired with a decision agent, accelerates robots to production-grade performance while ensuring operational safety. The talk will also dive into short-horizon dexterous manipulation, long-horizon planning, and how purpose-built hardware supports scalable deployment in dynamic warehouse environments.
How AI Enhances ABB’s Robot Performance
Speaker: Thomas-Tianwei Wang, Lead AI Application Engineer, ABB Robotics
Day|Time: October 15 | 1:30 PM – 2:15 PM
Explore how AI is being integrated across ABB’s diverse robot portfolio to further boost performance and adaptability. The talk will highlight applications in multiple sectors and form factors, demonstrating how AI-driven innovations are enhancing efficiency, precision, and versatility in real-world deployments.
Sim2Real Reinforcement Learning: Training Robots for the Real World
Speakers: Ken Goldberg, William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering, UC Berkeley; Jeff Mahler, Co-Founder & CTO, Ambi Robotics
Day|Time: October 15 | 2:30 PM – 3:15 PM
The robotics industry is shifting from static automation to systems that learn and adapt in dynamic environments. This session explores how advances in physical AI that combine simulation, reinforcement learning, and real-world data are accelerating deployment and boosting reliability in applications like e-commerce and logistics. Using Ambi Robotics’ PRIME-1 foundation model as a case study, we’ll show how simulation-driven training and physical feedback enable robots to handle diverse packages with speed and precision. Attendees will gain practical insights into scalable, resilient approaches driving the next generation of robotic manipulation.
The Generalization Gap: Why Physical AI Needs Smarter Data Curation
Speaker: Benji Barash, Co-Founder & CEO, Roboto
Day|Time: October 15 | 4:00 PM – 4:45 PM
As the robotics community races to build foundation models that generalize across tasks, one major obstacle remains: the data itself. Unlike the internet-scale datasets that enabled breakthroughs in language and vision, robotics data is high-dimensional, multimodal, and deeply tied to specific hardware and environments. Barash will explore why better data curation, not just more data, is critical for Physical AI. Robots generate vast amounts of multimodal sensor data, but without structure, much of it goes unused. Roboto will demonstrate new analysis techniques that are helping to close this gap. From signal similarity search that surfaces recurring patterns in time-series logs, to vision-language models that help tag and triage episodes at scale, we’ll show how to curate real-world robotics data for use in training generalist models.
Day 2 of the Physical AI Forum
5 Keys to Deploying AI-Powered Robots in Manufacturing
Speaker: SK Gupta Co-Founder & Chief Scientist, GrayMatter Robotics
Day|Time: October 16 | 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM
AI-powered robotics can dramatically improve manufacturing productivity, quality, throughput, and cost efficiency. Yet many companies struggle to move from pilot projects to full deployment. Success requires more than just good tech – it demands strategic planning, a clear understanding of challenges, and strong internal advocacy. This talk will outline five key strategies for successful automation deployment. Topics include the importance of having an automation champion, optimizing full workflows, and redesigning processes to leverage robots’ unique strengths rather than mimic human actions. The presentation will also cover how to calculate ROI beyond labor savings, and why workforce readiness is critical to long-term success.
AI for Dexterity & Adaptation in High-Stakes Environments
Speaker: Vivian Chu, Co-Founder & Chief Innovation Officer, Diligent Robotics
Day|Time: October 16 | 1:30 PM – 2:15 PM
Hospitals are unpredictable, high-stakes environments that are proving to be challenging environments for robots. Learn about Diligent’s hybrid autonomy approach that blends classical robotics with modern AI to navigate real-world hospital variability. This has enabled the Moxi robot to perform tasks like swiping badges, rerouting paths, and recovering from perception errors. Chu will explore how real-time adaptation, vision-language agents, and behavior tree recovery help Moxi operate in complex, human-facing environments. She will share what we’ve learned from deploying at scale and how these lessons apply beyond healthcare to sectors like retail and office logistics.
Dexterous Robots in the Age of Embodied AI
Speaker: Mihai Jalobeanu, Founder & CEO, Dexman AI
Day|Time: October 16 | 2:30 PM – 3:15 PM
Learn how recent advances in embodied AI are enabling robots to perform complex tasks in unstructured environments using vision, language, and demonstration—without the need for traditional programming. By emphasizing general-purpose manipulation and real-time adaptability, AI-driven systems are broadening the scope of robotic applications across manufacturing, logistics, and service domains. During this talk, Jalobeanu will examine what’s working today, where limitations remain, and how close we really are to realizing a “ChatGPT for robotics.”
