Wayve's leadership is taking center stage at Actuate 26, the robotics industry's premier technical conference, where over 1,000 engineers and AI practitioners will gather to discuss the real engineering challenges behind scaling autonomous systems from laboratory prototypes to real-world production fleets. The event, scheduled for August 18 and 19, 2026, at Fort Mason in San Francisco, represents a significant moment for the autonomous driving sector as companies across robotics and physical AI confront a shared challenge: moving beyond impressive demos to reliable, scalable operations.

Why Is This Conference Attracting Top Autonomous Driving Talent?

Actuate 26 has become the industry's go-to venue for discussing the practical engineering work required to deploy robots and autonomous systems at scale. The conference brings together leaders from companies actively shipping robots into production, rather than focusing on theoretical research or venture capital pitches. This year's speaker lineup reflects the breadth of the robotics ecosystem, spanning autonomous vehicles, drone delivery, defense systems, construction, logistics, and industrial automation.

Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, will participate in a fireside chat exploring lessons from building and scaling autonomous systems in some of the most technically demanding real-world environments. Kendall will be joined by Chris Urmson, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Aurora, in similar conversations designed to extract practical insights from teams that have already navigated the transition from development to deployment.

What Topics Will Dominate the Technical Agenda?

The two-day event will focus on the engineering infrastructure and workflows that enable robotics companies to improve production-grade reliability. Rather than high-level strategy talks, sessions will dive into specific technical challenges that teams face when operating fleets of autonomous systems in the real world.

• Robot Foundation Models: How teams are building and fine-tuning large AI models that can generalize across different robotic platforms and environments.
• Robot Data Infrastructure: The systems and workflows required to collect, organize, and learn from vast quantities of multimodal sensor data across distributed fleets.
• Fleet Operations and Debugging: Practical approaches to managing multiple robots simultaneously, identifying failures, and improving performance based on real-world field data.
• Simulation and Evaluation: How companies use synthetic environments to train and test autonomous systems before deploying them in production.
• Autonomous Driving Specifically: Technical sessions dedicated to the unique challenges of scaling self-driving technology across different geographies and road conditions.

"Physical AI has graduated from the lab to the real world, but scaling it is now the defining challenge for the industry," said Adrian Macneil, co-founder and CEO of Foxglove, the conference organizer. "Making data actionable is how robotics companies scale from one robot to fleets, from simple automation to complex tasks, and from demos to production-grade reliability."

Adrian Macneil, Co-Founder and CEO, Foxglove

Macneil will open the conference with a keynote titled "The Future of Robotics," which will explore how actionable robot data enables teams to move from breakthrough demonstrations to production-grade fleets capable of increasingly complex tasks. The keynote will introduce Foxglove's vision for an agentic data platform designed specifically for physical AI, with customer perspectives and product demonstrations showing how AI-based workflows help teams learn faster from real-world robot data.

How to Stay Current on Robotics Industry Developments?

For engineers, founders, and technical leaders working in autonomous systems, several strategies can help you stay informed about production-scale challenges and solutions:

• Attend Industry Conferences: Events like Actuate 26 bring together practitioners solving real problems, offering direct access to teams deploying robots at scale and hands-on exposure to tools and workflows used in production systems.
• Follow Technical Talks and Fireside Chats: Listen to leaders like Alex Kendall and Chris Urmson discuss lessons learned from building autonomous systems in demanding real-world environments, which often reveal practical insights not available in published papers.
• Engage with Expo Programming: Actuate 26 will feature companies across the robotics and AI infrastructure ecosystem, including sponsors like NVIDIA, Uber AI Solutions, and others, providing direct exposure to emerging tools and technologies.
• Participate in Hands-On Demos and Workshops: The conference includes dedicated networking, technical demos, breakout programming, and live robot experiences designed to connect builders across the robotics ecosystem and share practical solutions.

The speaker lineup extends well beyond autonomous driving, reflecting the maturation of physical AI across multiple domains. Leaders from Physical Intelligence, Zipline (drone delivery), Shield AI (defense autonomy), Google DeepMind, and NVIDIA will share their experiences scaling robots in their respective fields. This cross-pollination of ideas between autonomous vehicle teams and roboticists working in other domains often yields insights applicable across the entire industry.

Actuate 26 has sold out in previous years since its launch in 2024, underscoring the industry's hunger for practical, technical knowledge about scaling autonomous systems. The conference's focus on production-grade reliability and real-world deployment challenges reflects a broader shift in the robotics sector away from laboratory demonstrations toward operational systems that must perform reliably at scale. For Wayve and other autonomous driving companies, participation in forums like this signals confidence in their technical approaches and commitment to solving the engineering challenges that separate viable commercial systems from impressive prototypes.

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