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Robotics Days for Industry 2023        
November 29th and 30th, 2023         
Klaus Computing Building | 266 Ferst Drive | Atlanta GA, 30332

Keynote Speaker: Torsten Kroeger | Chief Technology Officer at Intrinsic 
Perception and Actuation in Industrial Robotics: Machine Learning Made Simple 

Abstract: Robotics requires an intelligent connection between perception and action. Adding cameras and sensors to robot arms or mobile robots makes the task of robot programming challenging (and often economically non-viable). I will show examples of how non-expert robotics application developers can use computer-vision and machine learning algorithms without writing a single line of code or any knowledge about training and inference. 

Compared to robot perception, creating utility value through machine learning for robot actuation remains a challenge - especially when physics plays a role in your application (e.g., dealing with unknown or changing friction, modeling contact forces, unknown and changing process parameters, dynamically changing environments). While much less generic, I will show examples of how a novice application programmer can implement applications using force/torque-controlled robots. I will demonstrate how these concepts can be applied across applications and to a large extent agnostic to robot and sensor hardware using a new software platform called Intrinsic Flowstate.

Bio: Torsten is Chief Technology Officer at Intrinsic. He is the founder and former CEO of Reflexxes GmbH, a startup working on research and development of real-time motion generation software. In 2014, Reflexxes was acquired by Google, where Torsten became the Head of a Robotics Software Division. This included coordinating robotics and machine learning research activities between DeepMind, Google Research, Boston Dynamics, and Google X. He is also a Co-founder and former CEO of Loom Vision GmbH. Loom Vision's focus was on software and certification of machine learning and robotics software. In 2018, the team of Loom Vision GmbH joined X. From 2017 to 2022, Torsten was a Professor of Computer Science at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). 

Torsten has been working as a research consultant for Volkswagen AG, KUKA Roboter GmbH, Connyun GmbH, Manz Automation AG, Auris Surgical Robotics, Inc., Redwood Robotics, Inc., and Google, Inc.. 

Torsten is an editor or an associate editor of multiple IEEE conference proceedings, books, and book series, and the Multimedia Editor of the Springer Handbook of Robotics. Among other awards, Torsten received the 2022 IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award, the 2018 IEEE RAS Distinguished Service Award, and the 2014 IEEE RAS Early Career Award. He is a member of the 2023 IEEE Fellow class.