Indoor robots get clean floors, Wi-Fi and a map that stays put. Field machines get mud, dust, slopes, weather and a worksite that redraws itself every shift. That gap is the subject of a session at RoboBusiness 2026, where Mel Torrie, founder and CEO of Autonomous Solutions Inc. (ASI), will argue that the next leap in field deployments comes from wiring autonomous vehicles and robots into one system rather than from any single clever machine.
The talk is titled “Designing the Robotics Ecosystem for Outdoor Autonomy” and sits in the Field Robotics Track. Per the conference agenda it runs on October 20, 2026, from 10:30 am to 11:15 am in Room 206 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
Torrie’s pitch is about cooperation, not hardware specs. His argument is that heavy autonomous vehicles and smaller robotic platforms are still bought, deployed and managed as separate projects, when the work they do overlaps. The session promises a unified ecosystem in which physical robotics operate alongside autonomous vehicles, plus a strategic roadmap for operators trying to navigate a shifting landscape in genuinely difficult work environments.
He has the mileage to make the case. ASI was founded in 2000 and is based in Mendon, Utah, where it builds brand-agnostic autonomy that retrofits onto equipment customers already own instead of asking them to buy a new fleet. Its Mobius command and control software supervises multiple autonomous vehicles across a site or from a remote operations centre. The company’s own figures put it at more than 1,000 vehicles deployed and over 25 years of autonomous experience, across civil construction, logistics, agriculture and landscaping. The Robot Report adds mining to that list, which is where ASI’s largest deployments live.
Torrie’s route into the field is unusually direct. He grew up on a Canadian farm, holds an MS in electrical engineering from Utah State University, started robotics research 28 years ago and founded ASI in 2000. Agriculture was the itch he set out to scratch; mining, construction and logistics followed.
The session lands inside a dense programme. The opening keynote on October 20, 2026, from 9:15 am to 10:00 am, is “The Next 20 Years of Robotics” with Rodney Brooks of Robust AI, Jonathan Hurst of Agility, Ken Goldberg of UC Berkeley and Steve Crowe of The Robot Report. October 21, 2026 brings a “State of Humanoids” keynote at 9:30 am with panellists from Agility, Apptronik, Persona AI and PSYONIC, and a closing keynote at 3:00 pm in which Morgan Pope of Familiar Machines & Magic talks about creating robotic characters.
RoboBusiness is produced by Arrowfly LLC in partnership with The Robot Report and Design World. Full conference passes are on sale, with discounts offered for academia, associations and corporate groups.
Earlier on GismoLand: The Robot Report Startup Radar 2026. Young robotics firms have until October 6.
