A guide to everything happening at RoboBusiness 2026

RoboBusiness 2026 kicks off tomorrow at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Over the next two days, the show will bring together more than 1,600 attendees for discussions on cutting-edge research, industry trends and innovative applications in areas such as manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, logistics and more.

This year we will celebrate 20 years of RoboBusiness. We will celebrate the community that made this milestone possible and look ahead to the next 20 years of collaboration and growth.

The event will include more than 40 sessions across five tracks: AI, Business & Development, Field Robotics, Humanoids and Enabling Technologies. The Engineering Theater in the exhibition space will also host presentations from industry experts.

Conference speakers will include experts from Robust AI, Agility Robotics, Amazon Robotics, Teradyne Robotics, Locus Robotics, Tesla, Boston Dynamics, ABB Robotics, MassRobotics and others.

To help you keep track of everything that happens, we have compiled a summary of all RoboBusiness activities. Registration is still open.

Get ready for a first day full of surprises

RoboBusiness will begin at 9:15 a.m. PT with the opening keynote “The Next 20 Years of Robotics.” Rodney Brooks, co-founder and chief technology officer of Robust AI; Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robot officer of Agility Robotics; and Ken Goldberg, William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering at UC Berkeley, will discuss what comes next in robotics. The keynote will conclude with a special announcement from RoboBusiness.

After the keynote concludes at 10:00 am, the exhibition hall will open and remain open until 6:30 pm. Here participants will find interesting robotics demos, the Engineering Theater and the Startup Alley. Sessions in the Engineering Theater will begin at 11am. The Expo Café is also located in the back of the exhibit hall for food and drinks during the show.

Group sessions will begin at 10:30 am in rooms 209/210, 207, 206, 203 and 204.

At 12:15 p.m., Bhavana Chandrashekhar, senior manager of applied sciences at Amazon Robotics, and Joyce Sidopoulos, co-founder and head of operations at MassRobotics, will kick off the Women in Robotics Luncheon. This ticketed event will include a fireside chat. It provides an opportunity for women in the industry to make connections, deepen relationships and advocate for greater female representation in robotics leadership.

The day will conclude with another keynote talk, “Beyond the Demo: Artificial Intelligence in Production Robotics,” at 4:30 pm in the theater. This session will feature insights from Chandrashekhar; James Davidson, head of artificial intelligence at Teradyne Robotics; Ali Raja, vice president of data centers at ABB Robotics; Ram Devarajulu, vice president of deep technology innovations at Cambridge Consultants; and Jon Battles, vice president of technology strategy at Cobot.

Following the keynote, the first day will conclude with a networking reception presented by Harmonic Drive in Room A/B. The reception will include drinks, light appetizers and time to connect with other RoboBusiness attendees and speakers.

RoboBusiness 2026 Day 2 includes more interesting talks

The second day will begin at 9:30 am with the “State of Humanoids” panel. This RoboBusiness 2026 panel will feature insights from Pras Velagapudi, CTO of Agility Robotics; Parker Conroy, head of product management at Apptronik; Michael Patrick Perry, head of business strategy at Persona AI; and Aadeel Akhtar, founder and CEO of PSYONIC.

The discussion will explore the capabilities that humanoids are offering today, the technical and operational challenges that remain, and the lessons that emerge from early industrial implementations.

The exhibition hall will open at 10am and close at 3pm. The in-depth sessions will begin at 10.45am in rooms 209/210, 207, 206, 203 and 204.

RoboBusiness 2026 will close with a final keynote at 3pm Morgan Pope, company director of Familiar Machines & Magic, will lead a session on how the startup is creating robotic characters.