Swap the Tool, Not the Robot: The Case for Multi-Purpose Industrial Platforms

Rishabh Aggarwal

CTO of Raise Robotics

Location: Stanford Robotics Center, Packard Electrical Engineering Bldg, Basement

Abstract

Single-purpose robots built the modern factory. A welding cell that performs one motion a million times is automation at its most efficient, and for decades the formula worked. But that formula collapses outside the factory. A construction site involves over 50 distinct trades and tasks (layout, drilling, fastening, welding, painting, inspection, material movement) each appearing intermittently, in different locations, for different durations as the project evolves. A robot that can only do one thing will sit idle whenever that task isn't needed. In this talk, Rishabh will make the economic case for multi-purpose platforms and walk through what it actually takes to build one, from tool-changing architecture to the autonomy stack that makes it work across an entire job site.

Bio: 

Rishabh Aggarwal is the CTO of Raise Robotics, where he leads the R&D team building advanced, multi-purpose robotic automation solutions for the most demanding tasks in heavy industries including construction, shipbuilding, and oil & gas.

His work developing AI-driven systems that combine advanced perception, dual-arm manipulation, and real-time adaptive control has earned recognition from TIME Magazine Best Inventions, the CEMEX Ventures Construction Startup Competition, and federal research grants from the National Science Foundation for addressing frontier problems in computer vision, machine learning, and robotics.

Before Raise Robotics, Rishabh was a founding engineer at Tortuga AgTech, where he designed and scaled autonomous harvesting systems from a single prototype to 150 operational robots, the world's largest commercial fleet at the time. During his tenure, the company grew from a $2M pre-seed valuation to $80M and earned Ag Robot of the Year 2024. Earlier roles at Axiom Exergy and Chakr Innovation included a patented carbon sequestration device that converted diesel soot into paint and ink.

Rishabh's career spans aerospace, agriculture, and heavy industry, from CubeSat satellite systems developed with NASA to autonomous robots deployed across hospitals, universities, and active construction sites. He holds an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder.