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Andy Li Taught the Forklift to See
Before VisionNav moved pallets in more than 30 countries, its co-founder was solving a quieter problem: how a robot could know where it was by looking around. Andy Li turned that research question into an industrial company built for the unruly geometry of real warehouses.
Mark Messina
Mark Messina is Managing Director and CEO of ANSCER Robotics Americas, the U.S. arm of a Bengaluru-based hybrid autonomous mobile robot company. With more than 25 years across engineering, manufacturing and operations, he helped build the modern warehouse-robot industry from the inside - joining Amazon during the Kiva Systems acquisition, later working on Amazon Prime Air drones, IoT at Mattel, and leading U.S. expansions for Geek+ and Addverb. He now runs ANSCER's Austin, Texas headquarters, championing a frugal, ROI-first approach to robotics and a Robots-as-a-Service model built to put automation within reach of small operators.
Sam Richardson
Sam Richardson is the CEO of Volley Automation, a robotics and software company that uses AI-enabled automated guided vehicles to densify parking garages, fitting up to twice as many cars in smaller footprints. A former Hamilton College quarterback turned channel-sales and operations leader at companies like Hewlett-Packard, Fellowes Brands and SGS & Co, he now runs Volley from a 35,000-square-foot research and demo facility the company opened in Denver in 2026 after relocating from South San Francisco. Based in Nashville, he is steering robotic parking projects across New York, Tennessee, Florida, California and Massachusetts.