Robotics: From Systems to Scale
26 May 2026 · London EC2A · 80 attendees
Panel discussion. For founders, senior professionals, researchers, and experts working across robotics and AI.
Robotics is no longer constrained by the ability to build high-performance systems. The challenge has shifted to deployment: moving robots from controlled demos into real environments shaped by regulation, safety requirements, integration complexity, and unit economics.
The industry is now facing a gap where the cost of handling edge cases often exceeds the initial system development effort.
Together with investors, engineers, and founders across humanoids, medical robotics, and warehouse automation, we will explore what it takes to move from technical proof-of-concept to production at scale.
Topics we’ll explore:
The deployment bottleneck: why hardware integration lags behind AI progress
Generalisation in practice: reliability in unstructured environments
The reference gap: how founders secure industrial validation in conservative procurement systems
Capital allocation: where investors see long-term viability vs technical risk
Systemic barriers: regulation and procurement in scaling from pilot to production
Designing for scale: general-purpose systems vs task-specific applications under real operating conditions
Speakers
✅ Dmitry Grishin - Founding Partner, Grishin Robotics
Since 2012, one of the world's most active robotics investors. Portfolio includes 38 companies and 2 unicorns, including Ring (acquired by Amazon, $1B), Eero (Amazon), Zipline, Starship, Spin (Ford), Sphero, and Wise (IPO at $11B).
✅ Dr Ekaterina Sergeeva - Systems Engineering Lead, Humanoid
Systems engineer with a background in EV and software development, focused on safety, reliability, and architecture. Contributes to ISO standards for industrial autonomous systems and mobile robotics. Top 50 Women in Engineering UK.
✅ Oleg Balakhnov - Senior Robotics Research Engineer, Ocado Technology, Expert in imitation learning & reinforcement learning for robotic manipulation. Previously worked on autonomous driving at Sber Automotive and academic robotics at Innopolis.Founder Robot Leaning Collective.
✅ Alex Tabolkin - founder of Fairway Dynamics. Built robotics systems for ASDA, Nissan, and other large-scale operational environments. Currently developing autonomous service systems for golf course operations using robotics and AI, targeting reduction of manual maintenance load and operational cost pressure
Speaker - Moderator
✅ Elena Novakovskaya - Senior Manager Robotics, Capital Equipment & Digital Solutions EMEA, Johnson & Johnson MedTech, working at the intersection of medical robotics strategy, process standartisation, clinical adoption and commercial scale across Europe - covering surgical, electrophysiology and implant-related robotics segments.
Co-hosted by London tech communities Tower × Founders Connect.
Agenda
🤝 6.30 – 7.00 pm doors open, networking
🎤 7.00 – 7.45 pm moderated discussion
💬 7.45 – 8.10 pm Q&A
🤝 8.10 – 09.30 pm networking
🇬🇧 Language: English
Spaces are limited; early booking is advised.