Post-CoRL 2026: What's Next for Robot Learning? @Robotics Center
Hosted by Embodied Collective + Skylar + Jerry Huang (Robotics Center) + Robotics Center of Silicon Valley + Sahar Mor (Bond AI) + Sharon Zhang
Register with organizer
What to look forward to
The post-CoRL 2026 discussion will pair paper authors from UC Berkeley and Stanford, including researchers behind work on humanoid navigation, robot memory, and dexterous manipulation, with robotics VCs and frontier-lab researchers from Amazon FAR and 1X. They’ll explore what’s next for robot learning, foundation models, and real-world humanoids.
Inside the event
CoRL 2026 wraps in Austin on Nov 12. Less than 24 hours later, the conversation lands in San Francisco.
We're bringing CoRL 2026 paper authors back from Austin and putting them on one stage with the VCs who back robot learning. The people writing the papers and the people deciding which ones become companies, in the same room, the night after the conference ends.
Missed Austin? This is the fastest way to catch up on what mattered. Were you there? Come argue about it.
On stage · Panel 1: fresh from Austin
- Yuxin Chen, UC Berkeley. Getting humanoids through cluttered real-world spaces with a single whole-body VLA. Co-author of a CoRL Spotlight on humanoid navigation, and first author of CLIFT, which turns Gemini Robotics On-Device into humanoid specialists
- Anuva Banwasi, Stanford Interactive Perception and Robot Learning Lab. Robots that get better by remembering what they've done. First author of MessyMem, learning-from-doing memory for mobile manipulation
- James (Jingxi) Xu, postdoc at Stanford's Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab. Wear it to teach it. Co-author of Universal Manipulation Exoskeleton, which teaches robots compliant whole-body skills with real-time torque feedback
- Jonas Frey, postdoc at Stanford ASL and UC Berkeley BAIR. Navigation that holds up in the real world. Co-author of GLST, long-horizon memory for chained navigation goals, and EgoHTR, egocentric 4D data of humans crossing rough terrain
Panel 2: inside the frontier labs
Researchers from the labs building robot foundation models and world models, on where generalist robots are really headed
- Ziqi Pang, Member of Technical Staff at Amazon FAR (Frontier AI & Robotics), building robotics models
- Chaoqi Liu, researcher on the World Model team at 1X. How world models are shaping the next generation of humanoid robots
More frontier lab speakers dropping this week
Plus VCs investing in robotics and physical AI in the room. Spots are limited and we review every application, so register early
What we'll get into
- The papers everyone was talking about in the hallways, and which ones will still matter outside the lab
- World models as policies: a real shift, or this year's buzzword?
- Generalist robot policies meet real-world RL
- What VCs want to see before a research project becomes a company, and where they're placing bets next
Who's in the room
Robotics researchers, founders, engineers and investors from across the Bay Area. If you're building, funding or deploying robots, this is your crowd. Come early, stay late, and meet the people you've been citing.
Schedule
- 6:00 PM · Doors open and networking
- 6:30 PM · Panel 1: CoRL 2026 authors, fresh from Austin
- 7:00 PM · Panel 2: inside the frontier labs
- 7:45 PM · Audience Q&A, then networking, drinks and bites
- 9:00 PM · Wrap
Good to know
- Registration requires approval. Spots are limited and we review every application
- Venue: Robotics Center of Silicon Valley, 90 Welsh St in SoMa, a working robot lab with arms, hands and humanoids on the floor
About Embodied Collective
A community for people building the future of physical AI in San Francisco. We host panels, dinners and demos, and send The Physical AI Brief every week.
Follow us
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/embodied-collective
- X: @EmbodiedCoX
- Luma (all events and the weekly brief): luma.com/embodiedcollective
- Website: embodiedcollective.org
About Robotics Center
Robotics Center of Silicon Valley is the hardware, data and evaluation partner for teams building physical AI. From our lab at 90 Welsh St in San Francisco, we supply and integrate robot arms, dexterous hands, humanoids, quadrupeds and egocentric capture rigs from leading manufacturers, run teleoperation data collection, and benchmark frontier robot models on real hardware through our open-source XEbench and independent model evaluations. Hundreds of labs, startups and enterprise teams, from Apple and Meta to YC founders and university groups, come to us to get robots running, collect data and find out what their models can actually do in the physical world. Robotics Center is a Y Combinator S25 company backed by NVIDIA Inception.
Robotics Center of Silicon Valley
Robotics Center of Silicon Valley, 90 Welsh St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA. Confirm the venue with the organizer before traveling.
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Last checked: Nov 12, 2026. Confirm current availability before making plans.
Organizer page checked: Nov 12, 2026. Check registration for the latest details.