Overview

Please join us for the 2022 Pacific Northwest Regional Meeting of the National Academy of Engineering, co-organized by Amazon and the University of Washington. The meeting will include a symposium that brings together NAE Members and other researchers and practitioners from the greater Pacific Northwest for an afternoon of technical talks and networking on the topic of Human-Robot Interaction.

When: May 19th, 2022

Where: Amazon Summit Building - 2122 7th Ave. Seattle, WA 98121

Registration: (Please note that this is the information and registration page for members of the NAE. Non-members are warmly encouraged to register for and attend the symposium - please learn more here.) If you plan to attend the event, please register here. Although there is no registration fee, you must register to attend. Lunch, coffee breaks and a reception will be sponsored by Amazon.

Registration deadline: Registration must be received by May 13. However, capacity is limited, and registration will be opened to non-members on April 29. We strongly recommend that members register before that date.

COVID precautions: We expect attendees to be vaccinated and to feel healthy. Masking is strongly encouraged.

Check In: Please check in at reception. Check in will begin at 11:00 am in the reception area. Please allow ample time for check in.

Parking: We recommend taking public transportation. Amazon Summit Building is walking distance from the Westlake Light Rail Station. If you drive, we recommend parking in the building garage. There is one garage entrance accessible from 7th Ave on Blanchard. Please note that free parking is not available.

Out-of-town Guests: Seattle has many downtown hotels. The Kimpton Palladian Hotel and the Westin Seattle are particularly convenient.

Agenda

11:00 am - 11:30 am: Check-in

11:30 am - 1:00 pm: Lunch and NAE Business Meeting

1:00pm - 1:20 pm: Symposium Welcome and Introduction

1:20pm -1:35pm: Overview of Robotics and AI at Amazon

1:35pm - 2:10 pm: The Evolving Operations and Logistic Challenges at Amazon - A discussion of how these challenges have changed over the past few decades, including the interesting challenges and opportunities provided by scale and automation related to inventory storage, network design, and process operations across fulfillment and transportation.

2:10 pm - 2:45pm: Unstructured Indoor Mobility - How Amazon builds autonomous mobile robots that are safe and fluent with and around people.

2:45pm - 3:20 pm: Robotics at Scale at Amazon - A dive into the challenges of scaling autonomous robotics and AI technologies across millions of items and packages.

3:20 pm - 3:40 pm: Coffee and Snacks Break

3:40 pm - 4:25 pm: Aggressive, Resilient, High-Speed Navigation in Off-Road Terrain - Recent progress in off-road autonomy.

4:25 pm - 5:00 pm: Inventing at Amazon for Physical Stores - The Computer Vision (CV) technologies powering Just Walk Out and Amazon One, and a perspective on the evolution of CV.

5:00 pm - 6:00 pm: Panel Discussion on Human-AI Interaction

Co-organized by Ed Lazowska (UW) and Sidd Srinivasa (UW+Amazon), with enormous thanks to Kelly Warren (Amazon)

Meeting summary

Prior NAE Pacific Northwest Regional Meetings

March 2003: The Interface Between Engineering and Biology and its Impact on the Human Condition

March 2009: Contemporary Topics in the Energy Field

March 2015: Reverse Engineering the Brain

April 2016: Autonomous Agents: Technology and Policy

April 2022: Human-Robot Interaction