• Blog
  • Archives
  • Bio
  • Awards
  • Speaking
  • Book
  • Contact

Manufacturing Leadership Summit, Grand Rapids Michigan

Published: Wednesday, 29 September 2021

After a long pandemic hiatus from giving speeches in person, I was invited to be the in-person keynote speaker at The Right Place’s Manufacturing Leadership Summit, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I spoke about why it’s so difficult to start a robotics company and what’s needed to start a successful robotics company.

I spoke about the great work being done by companies including:

  • Dusty Robotics (construction)
  • Rapid Robotics (manufacturing)
  • IronOx (agriculture)
  • AMP Robotics (recycling)
  • Icon Robotics (construction)
  • Zipline (delivery)

Starting a successful robotics company is hard! You need to find a problem robots are capable of solving, make the right technical choices in order to scale, and get the business model right. It was so fantastic to share my knowledge about robotics and to travel and attend an actual conference with other people, after not traveling at all for work during the pandemic.

I was fortunate ArtPrize was happening while I was in Grand Rapids. ArtPrize is this annual huge art competition in Grand Rapids where participants compete to win over $450,000 in prize money. I got to see some of the 1700+ art pieces that were competing. It was also really cool that not all the artwork was in one place, but was scattered all over the city, for everyone to enjoy in a distributed, parallel way. Also, it rained while I was there, and the artwork outdoors had to withstand that as well! The art pieces were so big and creative! Grand Rapids was a fun city!  Here are some of the pieces of artwork I saw being proudly displayed.

 Grand Rapids Michigan

 Grand Rapids Michigan

 Grand Rapids Michigan

 Grand Rapids Michigan

 Grand Rapids Michigan

 Grand Rapids Michigan

 Grand Rapids Michigan

 Grand Rapids Michigan

 Grand Rapids Michigan

 Grand Rapids Michigan

About Me

Marita ChengForbes named me a world's top 50 woman in tech & 30 Under 30. I founded Robogals and Aipoly and was Young Australian of the Year 2012. Currently working on robotics company Aubot. I'm the youngest Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and I give speeches around the world.

I tweet @maritacheng and I'm on Facebook.

Subscribe

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Random Articles

  • My relationship with money

    You don't need that much money.  Just enough to pay the rent, utilities and food. My plan I created for myself post-uni when I was in 3rd year uni...

  • Hardy Group interview

    The Hardy Group invited me to speak with them about healthcare, robotics and leadership.  Here I am riffing about those topics!

  • Love is...

    Spending long, snug evenings with your significant other. Making time to look after your family. Jesting, gabbing and chilling with friends. Building...

  • Don't kid yourself on your priorities

    What are your priorities?  Work?  Family?  Relationship?  Start-up?  9-5?  Non-profit?  Volunteering?  Watching television?  Reading blogs?  Eating?  Meetings? Don't...

  • Do what's hard

    In Robogals, I always looked for the hardest possible thing to do.  And then I did it. Because I knew that if I could achieve that, then I would...

  • Forbes World's Top 50 Women In Tech

    I was pretty chuffed and surprised to learn that I was named a top 50 women in tech globally by Forbes magazine!  OMG! See the full list here.  And my...

  • Be a fool

    When you learn something for the first time, everything is new to you. So you explore, you try different things, you fall down, you fail, you fail, and...

  • AI Most Influential Woman in Engineering 2000-2020

    This AI named me the 29th most influential woman in engineering from 2000-2020! It looked up frequency of my name being mentioned alongside an...

  • How to expand

    Are you doing the same old things that you know how to do, that you know won’t fail, that you know won’t make you look bad, over and over again?  It...

  • 1 day = 2

    When I was planning the first UK SINE, for about a month, I split each day into two.  I would get up in the morning, and do all the actions needed to...

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Scroll to Top