Bio
A prominent and globally recognized authority in robotics, Larry M. Sweet is professor of the Practice in Robotics and associate director of Technology Transition in the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM). His focus is establishing a new Technology Transition Laboratory, taking IRIM research with high-impact potential to successful deployment with industry. Sweet received his doctoral and master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a tenured faculty member at Princeton University, associate editor of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) magazine and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) journals, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, and recipient of the ASME “Best Paper of Year” award, with his courses twice recognized as among the “10 Best” at Princeton.
Sweet served as senior vice president of technology for ABB Industrial Systems, as vice president of Fanuc Computer Numerical Controls, and manager of GE Automation and Artificial Intelligence research. As senior vice president of operations at United Technologies and PepsiCo, he led global engineering, manufacturing, and quality functions, pioneering advanced manufacturing technologies combined with world-class levels of operational excellence, and received Industry Week’s “Top 10 Plants in North America” award. Most recently, he was chief technology officer at Symbotic, leading the conceptualization, design, and implementation of transformational warehouse automation technology using fleets of high-speed autonomous mobile robots in dense three-dimensional structures. This technology provides fully automated product handling and palletizing without human contact — from initial project startup to a pipeline of operational systems — for leading customers in four vertical market segments. During his time at Symbotic, Sweet was recognized for his achievements with numerous awards, including the 2013 Edison Award for Productivity and the 2015 Manufacturing Leadership Supply Chain High Achiever Award.
