ICRA 2026 — IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation

## TEE Take

**ICRA** is the annual reckoning for robotics research — the place where the gap between lab demos and deployable systems gets measured in public. For investors, the workshops on Days 1 and 5 are more valuable than the main conference; that's where PIs preview work 12-18 months ahead of publication. The main sessions show you where the field is. The workshops show you where it's going.

Atlanta as a venue is a strong signal — **Georgia Tech**'s robotics program is top-five nationally, and the local manufacturing base means live demos with real hardware, not simulations projected onto screens.

## Insider Tip

The industry exhibition has become a quiet recruiting ground. If you're hiring senior robotics engineers, badge-scan the poster session presenters — they're the ones who actually built the systems, not the PIs whose names are on the papers. For dealflow, attend the "Robotics for Real-World Applications" workshop — it's self-selecting for teams closer to commercialization.

## What to Expect

Five days: two days of workshops bookending three days of the main conference. Expect 2,000+ paper presentations across manipulation, locomotion, perception, planning, HRI, and field robotics. The exhibit floor hosts 100+ companies from startups to **FANUC** and **ABB**. Hallway conversations at ICRA have directly led to at least a dozen acquisitions over the past five years.

## Who Should Attend

Robotics founders benchmarking their technology against the state of the art. Deep tech investors scouting acquisition targets or validating technical due diligence. Engineering leaders recruiting PhD talent. Anyone who needs to understand where the frontier actually is — not where LinkedIn thinks it is.