Pittsburgh shows off its robotics expertise at CES, the ‘Super Bowl of tech events’

Las Vegas might be over 2,000 miles and three time zones away, but for the next few days, it’ll have a piece of the Pittsburgh robotics sector.

CES, fka the Consumer Electronics Show, is the annual, global tech event held in Vegas that sets the stage for technologists and founders to come together and share their progress with peers. Several Pittsburgh robotics and autonomy leaders will be among 115,000 attendees at CES 2024 to pitch their companies as well as the region’s technical prowess.

Whether their specialty is in self-driving trucks or in developing AI-powered bike lights to improve cyclist safety, the execs attending this year say they’ll be proud to show off their progress as well as learn from their global peers.

“CES is the Super Bowl of tech events and our presence there helps us to bring visibility to both our technical progress and our business with an audience that’s truly global,” Thoro.ai CEO Patrick Mondi told Technical.ly. “So we’re really excited about that.”

Aurora, May Mobility and Velo.ai will also formally represent the region at the summit through a partnership between the Pittsburgh Technology Council and the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance (PRA). The founders will join a panel discussion titled “Building Approachable Technology in Pittsburgh” focused on the city’s robotics and autonomy achievements.

In 2023, Pittsburgh attendees included the likes of Ansys, Convestro, Intromark, Make It Home Safe and Powercast Corporation. This year, Ansys, Powercast are others returning, alongside the startups accompanying the two economic development groups.

Both organizing orgs believed that the region needed to pull its resources to highlight the city’s status as a tech hub, according to PRA’s VP of business investment, Mike Harding. (CES comes three months after Pittsburgh was snubbed by the US Economic Development Administration’s Tech Hubs program, for which a regional consortium was formed to pitch the region’s strengths.)

“This is a market first. We feel pretty confident we’re going to swing for a home run,” Harding said referring to the decision to have the Pittsburgh companies represent the region at CES. “But, you know, it’s things like this that I don’t think you see in other markets, at least in my experience — this very willingness to extend resources that together make something a lot bigger than if we would have done it alone.”

In addition to the panel, the execs are excited for the exposure that a convention with attendees from around the world can provide. Since Velo.ai is still a relatively new company, CTO and cofounder Micol Marchetti-Bowick said, CES allows the team a chance to showcase their products and technology to individuals outside of the Pittsburgh region.

“At the end of the day, we have a product. It’s available for presale right now,” Marchetti-Bowick said, about the company’s AI-powered bike light called the Copilot. “We are excited to get that in front of people and [we] want more people to hear about it. And this is a great opportunity to connect with those people and get good feedback from them too.”

Whether it’s the Pittsburgh-centric panel or the networking opportunities, these local reps feel the Pittsburgh presence at CES represents a sign of the city’s robotics expertise and the potential that lies in the companies that were selected to represent the region.

Together, Pittsburgh Technology Council VP of Communications and Media Jonathan Kersting said, they can make the case for Pittsburgh’s robotics hub status better than any individual company or university ever could.

“This was just a perfect opportunity for us to come together and then to bring these companies with us, and everything and showcase just a, really a swath from startup to companies that are really on that edge of becoming massive,” Kersting said. “It just goes to show it can be built here in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh can come together and promote it. And yeah, hopefully [it] opens my eyes and the world around the world through Vegas that Pittsburgh is the place to be.”

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.