Humanoids: From The Warehouse To Your House
Date: Apr 9, 2025 @ 4:30-6:30PM | Location: CoDa W450 | Speaker: Jonathan Hurst | Affiliation: Agility Robotics/Oregon State University Robotics Institute
Speaker:
Prof. Jonathan Hurst, Agility Robotics/Oregon State University Robotics Institute
April 9, 2025 (Wed)
CoDa Building Room W450 Simonyi Center, Stanford
4:30 - 5:10: Tech Talk
5:10 - 5:30: Audience Q&A
5:30 - 6:30: Reception & Digit Demo
Abstract
How close are we to having safe, reliable, useful in-home humanoids? If you believe recent press, it's just around the corner. Unquestionably, advances in Al and robotics are driving innovation and activity in the sector; it truly is an exciting time to be building robots! But what does it really take to execute on the vision of useful, human centric, multi purpose robots? Robots that can operate in human spaces, predictably and safely? We think it starts with humanoids in warehouses, an unsexy but necessary beachhead market to our future with robots as part of everyday life. I'll talk about why a humanoid is more than a sensible form factor, it's inevitable; and I will speak to the excitement around a ChatGPT moment for robotics, and what it will take to leverage Al advances and innovation in robotics into useful, safe humanoids.
Speaker Bio
Jonathan W. Hurst is Chief Robot Officer and co-founder of Agility Robotics, and Professor and co-founder of the Oregon State University Robotics Institute. He holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering and an M.S. and Ph.D. in robotics, all from Carnegie Mellon University. His career-long research focus is to enable robots to interact physically with the world as well as people do, creating hardware and control approaches that enable the compliance, dexterity, and mobility we see all around us in the animal world. Today, that focus is on Physical Al, a powerful new set of tools to enable complex locomanipulation behaviors. This work is applied on Digit, the first humanoid to be commercially deployed, doing work in logistics warehouses. These are early steps toward robots going where people go, generating greater productivity across the economy, and improving quality of life for all.
