To promote community development and relationship building, the RoboBusiness Conference and Exposition provides a number of special events both on and off the exposition floor that are open to RoboBusiness conference attendees.

On Tuesday morning, June 20, 2006, join host Evolution Robotics for a pre-event breakfast and presentation by Paolo Pirjanian, President/CTO of Evolution Robotics.

Over the recent years, we have witnessed a growing number of robotic products make their way into our homes. These interactive, walking and talking toys and autonomous vacuum cleaners may not be viewed as robots, but they bring robotics to the mass consumer market in subtle ways. Do these robotic products represent the early stages of an emerging consumer robotics industry that may grow as large as the PC industry? In this enlightening session, Paolo Pirjanian, President and CTO of Evolution Robotics will discuss the challenge of developing affordable, useful, and reliable consumer robotic products from key technologies, to manufacturing, marketing, sales and distribution.

Dr. Paolo Pirjanian is President/CTO of the Evolution Robotics. Paolo was a lead engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on robotics technologies for space exploration. Results of his work have been featured on CNN and other media. Paolo was also a faculty member in the Computer Science department of the University of Southern California, where he teaches graduate level artificial intelligence. He holds a Ph.D. from Aalborg University in Denmark. He recently won the IEEE and Automation "Early Career Award" for the best, upcoming roboticist of 2004.