Raffaello D'Andrea
Most organisations cannot tell the difference between automation that works in a controlled environment and automation that transforms operations at scale. The gap between a proof of concept and a million deployed robots is a systems design problem, not a technology one. Leaders who understand that distinction make sharper decisions about where autonomous systems create genuine value – and where they create expensive distraction.
Raffaello D’Andrea, ETH Zurich Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control and co-founder of Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics), helps organisations understand what it actually takes to move autonomous systems from research into commercial deployment at industrial scale.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Raffaello D’Andrea
- He has built two commercially-deployed autonomous systems from the ground up – Kiva Systems, now the architecture powering over a million Amazon Robotics units across 300+ facilities, and Verity, whose autonomous indoor drones operate at nearly 200 sites worldwide. Most technology speakers have observed others build at scale; D’Andrea has done it twice.
- His account of the gap between academic research and industrial deployment is not speculative. He moved from Cornell professor to co-founder to chief technical advisor to ETH faculty, and back to founder again – carrying hands-on engineering responsibility at every stage. That trajectory gives organisations a rare, inside view of what makes autonomous systems fail or succeed in practice.
- The Kiva story – a $775M acquisition that became the operational backbone of the world’s largest e-commerce company – is a fully documented, publicly available case study in redesigning an entire industry’s logistics model around autonomous systems. D’Andrea can speak to that case from the inside, as the architect of the core system.
- His ongoing research at ETH Zurich, through platforms like CyberRunner, Cubli and the Flying Machine Arena, sits at the frontier of autonomous learning and control. Audiences hear what is actually being solved in research today, not what is being forecast by analysts.
- Elected to the National Academy of Engineering, inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the Kiva system, and recognised by the Logistics Hall of Fame – D’Andrea holds formal peer recognition across engineering, invention and industry simultaneously, a combination that is rare among technology speakers.
Biography highlights
- Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich; founder of ETH’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control
- Co-founder of Kiva Systems, acquired by Amazon in 2012 and now operating as Amazon Robotics, the autonomous fulfilment system at the core of Amazon’s global warehouse operations
- Founder and CEO of Verity, autonomous indoor drone company deployed at nearly 200 sites worldwide, with clients including IKEA, Maersk and UPS
- Elected member, National Academy of Engineering (2020); National Inventors Hall of Fame inductee (2022); Logistics Hall of Fame inductee (2024)
- IEEE Fellow; IEEE Robotics and Automation Award (2016); Engelberger Robotics Award (2015); Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2001); named on more than 40 US patents
- TED Global 2013 and TED 2016 speaker; TED and research videos with tens of millions of views
- New media artworks held in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada and France’s FRAC Centre; exhibited at the Venice Biennale
Biography
The systems running inside Amazon’s warehouses today – more than a million autonomous robots across over 300 facilities – trace their core architecture directly to Raffaello D’Andrea. As co-founder of Kiva Systems, D’Andrea designed the navigation logic, fleet coordination algorithms and adaptive control systems that made warehouse automation economically viable at commercial scale for the first time. When Amazon acquired Kiva in 2012, it rebranded the company as Amazon Robotics and made it the operational foundation of its global fulfilment network.
That work was built on a research track record with real competitive stakes. Before Kiva, D’Andrea was at Cornell University, where he led the Robot Soccer Team to four consecutive RoboCup world championships – using autonomous multi-agent competition as a proving ground for the kinds of coordination and real-time decision-making that large-scale robotics deployments require. The move from academic research to commercial deployment, and back to academic research, is the defining pattern of his career.
At ETH Zurich, where he founded the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, D’Andrea leads research through hands-on experimental platforms – CyberRunner, Cubli, the Flying Machine Arena, the Distributed Flight Array – that probe the real limits of autonomous learning, not its theoretical promise. In 2014, he co-founded Verity, whose autonomous indoor drone systems now operate at nearly 200 sites worldwide, automating inventory tracking and operational data collection for clients including IKEA, Maersk and UPS. The company raised a $43M Series B in 2023 with Qualcomm Ventures among the investors.
Elected to the National Academy of Engineering and inducted into both the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Logistics Hall of Fame, D’Andrea holds formal peer recognition across engineering, invention and industry – a combination that reflects a career built on closing the distance between what autonomous systems can do in a laboratory and what they can sustain across an industrial operation.
Key speaking topics
- Autonomous systems design and commercial-scale deployment
- AI, machine learning and physical intelligence
- Warehouse automation and supply chain operations
- Deep-tech entrepreneurship and venture building
- Autonomous flight and drone systems
- The gap between robotics research and real-world application
- The future of human-machine collaboration in physical operations
Ideal for
- COOs, heads of supply chain and logistics leaders evaluating or scaling autonomous operations
- CTOs and technology leadership teams making investment decisions in robotics and AI deployment
- Boards and executive committees setting autonomous systems strategy
- Innovation and transformation leadership forums focused on operational technology
Audience outcomes
- A practitioner’s framework for distinguishing autonomous systems that create genuine operational value from those that stall between proof of concept and deployment
- Concrete understanding of the systems design conditions that make robotics reliable and economically viable at industrial scale
- An insider account of how Kiva Systems redesigned warehouse operations – and what that process reveals about the real requirements of large-scale autonomous deployment
- A more accurate picture of where AI and robotics are heading, grounded in what is already working at commercial scale rather than in market speculation
- Sharper criteria for evaluating autonomous technology partnerships, vendor claims and investment priorities
Talks
Delivered at TED Global 2013, this talk demonstrates the physical capabilities of autonomous flying robots – juggling, balancing poles, cooperating to construct structures – to make the case for what machine autonomy can achieve when engineering precision meets creative ambition.
Key takeaways:
- Autonomous systems can perform complex, coordinated physical tasks in real time without human instruction
- The principles governing machine agility and coordination have direct applications in logistics, manufacturing and infrastructure
- Engineering constraints are design problems, not barriers – the most capable systems emerge from working within physical limits, not around them
Delivered at TED 2016, this talk presents the next generation of autonomous flight systems – from orientation-agnostic multi-rotor craft to coordinated swarms of micro-quadcopters – and examines what their capabilities reveal about the trajectory of autonomous technology.
Key takeaways:
- Autonomy at the swarm level introduces coordination challenges that are fundamentally different from single-system control – and fundamentally more powerful
- Advances in autonomous flight are already reshaping industries from logistics to live entertainment, not as future possibilities but as deployed realities
- The boundary between engineering and aesthetic expression is more productive than it appears – constraints that serve artistic goals often produce technically superior systems