Bridging Between AI and Robotics for Business and Product Development

Dr. Andrew Goldenberg
CEO, Anviv Mechatronics Inc.
Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto

April 14th, 3:00 PM, virtual

Contact Hope Lewis for access

Contemporary control systems methodologies used in Robotics have their origin in the classical control system theory. Except for increased adoption of modern computers in the hardware and software implementations, the design and analysis has been limited to the original knowhow. Until recently (10 years) the robotics field included operations mostly in structured environments. There was limited need to explore complexity beyond the standard requirements of high speed and high repeatability and accuracy. The situation started to change when the required tasks to be performed became complex and variable, environments became unstructured and with human presence, and the scope of the expected performance not completely defined. As a result, a new trust emerged, that of Artificial Intelligence-Embedded Robotics. It provides tools to deal with situations that are structurally and parametrically complex, also involving humans and are performed in variable environments that are not fully known. There is a need and an opportunity to fuse fundamental AI techniques with established robot control methods for autonomous mobility, image processing for scene and object identification, learning by imitation or reinforcement. The range of applications of the AI-Embedded Robotics is growing and it provides uncanny opportunities for business and product development. There is a need to look at this quest from the critical point of view that currently AI serves well when the systems can be a priori suitably trained or used in non-real time applications, ex. e-commerce, as opposed to robotics that involve real time operations in contact with the environment leading to limitations to the current use of AI knowhow.

Andrew Goldenberg is the founder of the field of Robotics at the University of Toronto where he has been since 1982 as a Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, cross appointed in the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering, and in the Electrical and Computer Engineering, and currently a Professor Emeritus. Has supervised to-date 47 PhD and 66 MASc theses. Publication record is with over 11000 citations (128 archival journal papers, 294 papers in major conferences, 15 book chapters and 105 patents granted and applied). Founder (1982) and CEO of Engineering Services Inc. (ESI). From 2000-2001 President of Virtek Engineering Science Inc. (VESI) that acquired a product line of ESI. Founder (2006) and President of Anviv Mechatronics Inc. (AMI). In May 2015 ESI has been acquired by a Chinese consortium located in Shenzhen, P.R. China. Became a public company in November 2016 listed in Hong Kong. Goldenberg was appointed Chief Technology Officer of the public company. He terminated this appointment in May 2019. As of June 2019, Goldenberg has returned to the University on part-time basis to work on graduate research in the use of Artificial Intelligence in advanced robotics, focusing on Consumer Robots. Founder (2021) and CEO of AI-Embedded Robotics Inc.  and of ESIRAI Inc.  both involved in the development of AI-driven robotics products. AI-Embedded Robotics Inc. is a consortium of four companies operating in agriculture robotics, home care robotics, perimeter security robotics and electronic panel manufacturing robotics cells.

Host: Pinhas Ben-Tzvi