Learn about the first humanoid deployments at RoboBusiness 2025

Humanoid robots have captured the public imagination and millions in funding in the past few years. But how close are they to widespread use? A keynote panel at RoboBusiness 2025 will examine the humanoid deployments and the prospects for technology development and commercialization.

The session, “Lessons Learned from First Humanoid Deployments,” will be on Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 10:30 a.m. PT in the Santa Clara Convention Center. It will feature industry leaders pioneering rollouts in a candid conversation about what’s working for humanoids, what still needs improvement, and the key engineering lessons to date.

Experts to share insights into humanoid deployments

The keynote panelists at RoboBusiness will include:

Jim Fan is director of AI and a distinguished research scientist at NVIDIA. His stated mission is “to build generally capable agents across physical worlds (robotics) and virtual worlds (games, simulation).”

Fan said his research “explores the bleeding edge” of multimodal foundation models, reinforcement learning, computer vision, and large-scale systems. He was the first intern at OpenAI and also interned at Baidu AI Labs and Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute.

At OpenAI, Fan worked with AI pioneers Ilya Sutskever and Andrej Karpathy on World of Bits, an agent that perceived the web browser in pixels and output keyboard/mouse control, well before large language models (LLMs).

In addition, Fan spearheaded Voyager (the first AI agent to play Minecraft proficiently and bootstrap its capabilities continuously), MineDojo (a NeurIPS award-winning open-ended agent that learned by watching 100,000s of Minecraft YouTube videos), Eureka (a 5-finger dexterous robot hand that could do tasks like pen spinning), and VIMA (one of the earliest multimodal foundation models for robot manipulation).

Fan has a Ph.D. from Stanford Vision Lab, advised by Prof. Fei-Fei Li. He was the valedictorian of the Class of 2016 and received the Illig Medal at Columbia University.

Katlyn Lewicke is head of global automation strategy and intel at GXO Logistics. Prior to this role, they served as the director of corporate projects and as a senior project manager in global finance at GXO Logistics.

Lewicke also worked at XPO Logistics Europe as a senior project manager in European Finance. They gained experience in business intelligence, European finance, and strategic initiatives at XPO Logistics Europe.

Before that, Lewicke worked at XPO Logistics in the office of the chairman and CEO. In addition, they have experience in risk management and ceded reinsurance from W. R. Berkley Corp. Lewicke has a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Smith College and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa society.

Melonee Wise is chief product officer at humanoid developer Agility Robotics. She has a deep history in developing autonomous robots and advancing the robotics industry as we know it today.

Prior to joining Agility in 2023, Wise was the vice president of robotics automation at Zebra Technologies. She was CEO of Fetch Robotics until its acquisition by Zebra Technologies in 2021.

Wise was the second employee at Willow Garage, where she led a team of engineers developing next-generation robot hardware and software, including ROS, the PR2, and TurtleBot.

Wise has received many accolades and awards including the MIT Technology Review TR35, Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Women of Influence and 40 Under 40, Supply & Demand Chain Executive’s 2021 Supply Chain Woman of the Year, the 2022 Engelberger award, and as one of eight CEOs changing the way we work by Business Insider. She received a BS in mechanical engineering and physics engineering and an MS in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois.

Register now for RoboBusiness 2025

RoboBusiness is the premiere 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 include more than 60 speakers, a startup workshop, the annual Pitchfire competition, and numerous networking opportunities. Over 100 exhibitors on the show floor will showcase their latest enabling technologies, products, and services to help solve your robotics development challenges.

RoboBusiness will also feature six conference tracks covering:

Humanoids (new for 2025)
Physical AI (new for 2025)
Field robotics (expanded for 2025)
Business development
Enabling technologies
Design and development best practices

RoboBusiness will be co-located with DeviceTalks West, the premier industry event for medical technology professionals. Both events attract engineering and business professionals from a broad range of healthcare and medical technology backgrounds.

Registration is now open for RoboBusiness 2025.

For information about sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, please contact Colleen Sepich at csepich[AT]wtwhmedia.com.