Experts look ahead at the next 20 years of robotics at RoboBusiness

From left to right: Rodney Brooks, Jonathan Hurst, and Ken Goldberg.

Robotics has evolved from a promising technology into a critical business tool across manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, agriculture, defense, and beyond. At RoboBusiness 2026, which takes place Oct. 20 and 21 in Santa Clara, Calif., industry leaders will reflect on the breakthroughs that defined the past two decades.

In the show’s opening keynote session, as RoboBusiness marks its 20th anniversary, leaders in robotics will explore the technologies, markets, opportunities, and challenges that will shape the next 20 years.

The session, which will start at 9:15 a.m. PT, will feature insights from 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. Steve Crowe, the executive editor of The Robot Report , will moderate the talk.

Brooks has worked in AI and robotics for more than 50 years. He had a full-stack academic career at Stanford and MIT , eventually becoming the founding director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab ( CSAIL ). Brooks and his students built the first mobile robots that moved among people and at human speeds, and then the first humanoid robots that used AI computer vision and simple speech understanding to interact with people.

Brooks also co-founded and led technology development at a series of AI and robotics companies starting with an AI software company in Palo Alto in 1984 that supported the first generation of deployed AI systems. His later companies have delivered tens of millions of robots (Roombas) into people’s homes, thousands of ground robots to the U.S. military in Iraq, and thousands of upper-torso humanoid robots to factories across the world. Today, Brooks’ latest company, Robust.AI , is deploying human-centered intelligent powered carts to fulfillment centers and factories.

Along with his roles at Agility , Hurst is a professor and co-founder of the Oregon State University Robotics Institute . His research aims to enable robots to physically interact with the world and people, focusing on compliance, dexterity, and mobility found in animals.

Currently, Hurst works on physical AI to facilitate complex loco-manipulation behaviors, exemplified by Digit , the first commercially deployed humanoid robot in logistics. This effort aims to enhance productivity and improve quality of life by integrating robots into everyday environments.