Keynote Speaker

TITLE

Robot Networks: Wires, Webs and Words

ABSTRACT

Communication networks are playing an increasingly important role in the design of distributed robot systems. They provide a means to wire robot system components together, to allow robots to share knowledge with each other and to communicate with humans. The technology available to implement distributed networked robot systems is also advancing, proving ever greater functionality and performance in ever decreasing size. This presentation surveys systems and issues concerned with the use of communication networks in distributed robot systems and human-robot interaction. A range of challenges are described. Space robotics provides an example of the expanding requirements for robot networks and is used as an exemplar of their application in this paper.

TITLE

Order Fulfillment: A Killer App for Networked, Autonomous Vehicles

ABSTRACT

Order fulfillment is a multi-billion dollar/euro business. Existing solutions range from the highly automated--whose cost effectiveness is inversely related to their flexibility--to people pushing carts around in warehouses manually filling orders--which is very flexible but not very cost effective. In this talk I will describe a radical new approach to order fulfillment that is both flexible and cost effective. The key idea is to use hundreds of networked, autonomous vehicles to do the walking. More details may be found at www.kivasystems.com