A Keynote Conversation Featuring Daniel Theobald
Robotics Pioneer • Entrepreneur • Investor • Farmer
ALL ATTENDEES INVITED
4:30 PM • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9
The Expo closes early so everyone can join the conversation.
4:30 PM • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9
The Expo closes early so everyone can join the conversation.
What does it actually take to build a successful startup in Silicon Valley?
In this candid talk, Daniel Theobald, founder of Intelligent Machine Guild and a longtime robotics entrepreneur, explores the myths, incentives, and unconventional strategies that shape the startup world. Drawing from his experience building and funding technology companies, Daniel will cover how founders can develop better mental models, pursue non-traditional funding strategies, maintain control of their companies, and think beyond the exit.
In this candid talk, Daniel Theobald, founder of Intelligent Machine Guild and a longtime robotics entrepreneur, explores the myths, incentives, and unconventional strategies that shape the startup world. Drawing from his experience building and funding technology companies, Daniel will cover how founders can develop better mental models, pursue non-traditional funding strategies, maintain control of their companies, and think beyond the exit.
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Daniel is an American robotics pioneer, entrepreneur, investor and farmer—with more than two decades of experience turning ambitious technologies into real-world businesses. He holds 67 issued patents, with dozens more pending, spanning robotics, automation and related technologies.
An MIT-trained mechanical engineer and Hertz Fellow, Daniel began his career developing control algorithms for a robotic Mars explorer. He went on to found Vecna Robotics and co-founder of MassRobotics, one of the world's leading robotics innovation hubs, and Chairman of The Founders Guild, where he works with entrepreneurs navigating the realities of building and funding companies. Daniel founded Twisted Fields, a 127-acre research farm on the California coast where regenerative agriculture meets robotics and automation. The working farm serves as a real-world laboratory for developing technologies intended to make sustainable farming more productive, practical and scalable. |
Session Speakers & Panelists
Physical Intelligence at the Edge
9:30 AM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
9:30 AM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
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Vasu Singh is a Director of Software Engineering at NVIDIA, working at the intersection of AI inference, accelerated computing, formal verification, and safety.
Since joining NVIDIA in 2016, Vasu has helped advance the software and methods needed to bring deep learning into real-world, safety-critical applications. His work spans safe AI inference, GPU software verification, and the design and testing of AI-based autonomous systems. Today, as AI moves beyond perception toward systems that can reason, plan, and act, Vasu is focused on making that intelligence practical, predictable, and trustworthy at the edge. At IMDC, he brings that perspective directly to machine builders—exploring what the newest generation of edge AI computing makes possible for real-world intelligent machines. |
Smarter Control. Simpler Mechanics.
2:00 PM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
2:00 PM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
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Randy Andrews has spent his career designing hardware and software products that make advanced motion control simple.
Randy received his BSME and BSEE in 1981 followed by an MSME in 1983 from MIT. Randy spent 4 years at Hewlett Packard's corporate research laboratory in the Applied Physics Research Center and Manufacturing Research Center followed by 4 years with Galil Motion Control. In July 1991 Andrews founded Douloi Automation to provide motion control hardware and software solutions for use with Microsoft Windows. In 2014 Randy co-founded Modusystems. Randy is entering his 13th year mentoring FIRST FTC high school robotics teams helping students turn ideas into competitive devices. Randy discusses hardware/software tradeoffs and how simple solutions are often the most difficult to find but well worth the effort. At IMDC, Randy is taking attendees inside a real engineering problem and showing how smarter controls can produce simpler, more elegant machines. |
Humanoids In Everyday Life
What Works, What Breaks, and How Close We Actually Are
What Works, What Breaks, and How Close We Actually Are
12:30 PM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
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Anto Patrex is the founder and CEO of CosmicBrain AI, where he is building the data, training, and deployment infrastructure needed to put general-purpose robots to work in the real world.
A repeat founder and applied-AI builder, Anto works at the intersection of robotics, AI, and real-world deployment—developing teleoperation systems, video-to-robot training pipelines, and the operational infrastructure required to supervise and improve robots once they leave the lab. Previously, Anto worked at xAI on post-training for Grok and in robotics at Chabot Space & Science Center. Today, his focus is on one of robotics' hardest problems: closing the gap between a robot that can perform an impressive demo and one that can reliably, safely, and economically do useful work in everyday life. |
Ten Design Mistakes We've All Made...Once
3:15 PM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
3:15 PM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
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Vamshi Konduri is a robotics leader with experience spanning startups, established robotics companies, research, and Amazon.
A Carnegie Mellon–trained roboticist, Vamshi has worked at organizations including Knightscope, Seegrid, and CMU’s CREATE Lab, tackling the practical challenges of turning sophisticated robotics technology into systems that work reliably in the real world. At Amazon, his work has included robotics AI and helping develop and deploy intelligent robotic systems at scale. That breadth gives Vamshi a valuable perspective on what works—and what doesn’t—when designing complex machines. At IMDC, he joins The Design Mistakes We’ve All Made… Once, sharing hard-earned lessons, tradeoffs, and design decisions that engineers can apply to their next machine. |
Beyond the Chatbot
How to Build a True AI Engineering Decision Engine
9:30 AM • Day 2 • Thursday, September 10th
How to Build a True AI Engineering Decision Engine
9:30 AM • Day 2 • Thursday, September 10th
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Jeff Doughty is a motion-control and automation veteran with more than 30 years of experience turning demanding engineering applications into practical, buildable machine systems.
His career spans precision motion, automation, engineered systems, and system architecture—giving him a broad view of how mechanics, motors, controls, software, and application requirements must work together. Today at ModuSystems, he applies that experience to the development of flexible motion-control and machine-design platforms. That systems perspective shapes his approach to AI. The real opportunity isn't simply to make engineers faster—it's to capture engineering knowledge, design rules, tradeoffs, and experience and make them available throughout the design process. At IMDC, Jeff explores the next step: moving beyond the chatbot to AI that can understand requirements, evaluate engineering decisions, and help engineer the machine. |
Super Humanoids Are Coming
11:00 AM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
11:00 AM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
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Alexander Nesiah is an inventor and systems architect developing a new electromechanical foundation for general-purpose robots. With more than 25 years of practical systems work spanning software, machine vision, industrial systems and advanced machine architecture, his focus is increasingly on a simple question: what would a robot look like if it were designed from first principles for the conditions in which machines will actually work?
He founded nMECH Robotics and created Project Hyperion to answer that question. Hyperion rethinks the robot from the inside out—moving power toward the core, transmitting force through the body, reducing distributed complexity, and building around a modular architecture designed to operate across radically different environments. The objective is not another humanoid optimized for demonstrations. It is a general-purpose machine architecture capable of working anywhere civilization goes—from factories and cities to the deep ocean and space. |
Ten Design Mistakes We've All Made...Once
3:15 PM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
3:15 PM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
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Zachary Lukasiewicz works at the intersection of robotics, safety, startups, commercialization, and market development.
His career has spanned early-stage and established companies, with experience in go-to-market strategy, operations, process automation, customer development, and helping emerging technologies make the difficult transition from promising idea to viable product. More recently, Zachary has become an active connector in the Bay Area robotics community, bringing together founders, engineers, investors, and companies working across intelligent machines and automation. His perspective extends beyond whether a machine can work to whether it can succeed in the real world: Can it be deployed safely? Manufactured? Supported? Scaled? And ultimately, will customers buy it? At IMDC, Zachary joins The Design Mistakes We’ve All Made… Once to bring the safety, deployment, and commercialization perspective to the engineering conversation. |
Understanding Digital Filters In Motion Systems
12:30 PM • Day 2 • Thursday, September 10th
12:30 PM • Day 2 • Thursday, September 10th
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Allan Tedford is a motion-control specialist with more than 40 years of experience in industrial automation, servo systems, and OEM machine design.
Throughout his career, Allan has worked alongside machine builders, engineers, and system integrators to design, apply, tune, and commission motion systems—from ultra-precision positioning and research applications to complex multi-axis production machinery. He is also a Certified Machine Safety Expert (CMSE®), bringing safety into the broader machine-design conversation. Allan has a particular talent for making complex motion-control concepts intuitive. At IMDC, he brings that approach to digital filters—using live demonstrations, visualization, and even sound to reveal what filters are actually doing inside a servo system. See the frequencies. Hear the difference. Understand the motion. |
Ten Design Mistakes We've All Made...Once
3:15 PM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
3:15 PM • Day 1 • Wednesday, September 9th
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Jeff Andresen is a precision-motion engineer with more than 30 years of experience designing high-performance positioning and automation systems for demanding applications.
His career has centered on the difficult intersection of mechanics, motion control, sensing, metrology, thermal stability, vibration, and system integration—where seemingly small design decisions can have an outsized impact on machine performance. Jeff has spent decades working through the real-world tradeoffs that emerge as positioning requirements move from millimeters to microns—and ultimately nanometers. That experience has given him a particularly practical perspective on what works, what doesn't, and how good engineering decisions get made. At IMDC, Jeff joins The Design Mistakes We've All Made… Once, sharing lessons learned from a career spent chasing performance at the limits of precision. |
Multiply Your Next Machines Productivity
2:00 PM • Day 2 • Thursday, September 10th
2:00 PM • Day 2 • Thursday, September 10th
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David Cary has spent nearly four decades at the intersection of motion control, robotics, machine design, and business—helping engineers and manufacturers build machines that do more.
An engineer by training, Dave's career has spanned motors, drives, controls, mechanical motion, integrated servos, and complete automation systems, including leadership roles with some of the industry's leading motion-control companies. Today at Contour Motion, Dave works directly with machine builders to solve challenging automation applications and rethink conventional approaches to machine design. At IMDC, he explores a provocative question: What if dramatically greater machine productivity doesn't require dramatically greater cost? |
Machine and Functional Safety
11:00 AM • Day 2 • Thursday, September 10th
11:00 AM • Day 2 • Thursday, September 10th
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Ryan Butler is an application engineer and machine-safety specialist with more than 25 years of experience in motion control and industrial automation.
Throughout his career, Ryan has worked directly with machine builders and engineers to solve real-world motion and automation challenges. Today at Yaskawa America, his work combines that practical machine experience with a particular focus on machine and functional safety. He holds both Functional Safety Engineer and Certified Machinery Safety Expert (CMSE) credentials. Ryan's perspective is practical: safety isn't simply a collection of standards or components added at the end of a design. It's an engineering process—understanding risk, defining required performance, selecting appropriate safety functions, and integrating them into the machine. At IMDC, Ryan brings those pieces together to answer a deceptively simple question: How is a machine actually made safe? |
Pressure and Life Expectancy
Proper Sizing of Ballscrews and Leadscrews
3:15 PM • Day 2 • Thursday, September 10th
Proper Sizing of Ballscrews and Leadscrews
3:15 PM • Day 2 • Thursday, September 10th
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Kevin Aestel specializes in ball screws, lead screws, and linear-motion solutions, helping machine builders select and apply the right screw technology for demanding industrial applications.
At NEFF, a German manufacturer with more than a century of experience in precision screw technology, Kevin works with customers across a broad range of ball screw, trapezoidal screw, linear-drive, and lifting-system applications. His perspective is grounded in the practical engineering decisions that determine how a linear-motion system ultimately performs: load, contact pressure, speed, duty cycle, lubrication, sizing, life expectancy, and cost. At IMDC, Kevin turns those variables into practical guidance for engineers—showing how properly sizing a ball screw or lead screw can improve reliability, performance, service life, and value. |
