Hrishikesh Tawade is a senior robotics and computer-vision engineer at the Toyota Research Institute, where he works on adopting and scaling AI-driven robotics research across Toyota’s global manufacturing ecosystem. His work focuses on bringing advanced perception, safety, and multi-robot intelligence into production environments. Previously, he led multi-robot coordination and battery-swap automation at Ample Inc., cutting swap times from 15 to 5 minutes and improving fleet reliability across deployments in the U.S., Japan, and Europe. He also strengthened perception pipelines and product readiness at a LiDAR-focused company during its transition from private to public markets. Earlier in his career, he built cost-efficient factory automation systems in India, solving constraints arou...