ROS 2 in Industry: Breakfast Meetup at MODEX 2026
CTO confirms ROS 2 is running on commercial autonomous forklifts, signaling open-source robotics' industrial maturity.
Seegrid, a leading provider of autonomous material handling vehicles and a member of the Open Source Robotics Alliance (OSRA), is spearheading a pivotal industry gathering. The company is hosting the "ROS Breakfast Meetup" at MODEX 2026, the largest manufacturing and supply chain trade show, in Atlanta on April 15. The event's core mission is to bring together stakeholders to share experiences and best practices around ROS 2, which Seegrid's CTO Tom Panzarella declares is "ready for primetime." This meetup represents a formal industry acknowledgment of the open-source Robot Operating System's evolution from a research tool to critical production infrastructure.
Crucially, Seegrid is not just talking about potential—it's demonstrating proven deployment. Panzarella states the company is "actively fielding ROS 2 on its commercial fleet of Autonomous Lift Trucks" and knows it is not alone in running ROS 2 in production at scale. This move validates ROS 2's reliability and performance for real-world, revenue-generating applications like warehouse automation. The meetup, with limited RSVP slots, is designed to foster networking and collaborative problem-solving among companies reshaping the market with this standardized, open-source platform, accelerating its adoption and solidifying its position as an industry backbone.
- Seegrid confirms ROS 2 is deployed on its commercial Autonomous Lift Truck fleet at production scale.
- The OSRA-backed meetup at MODEX 2026 aims to share best practices among industry stakeholders.
- Event signals a major shift, treating the open-source ROS 2 as mature core infrastructure for industry.
Why It Matters
Validates ROS 2 as a reliable, production-ready standard for industrial automation, accelerating adoption and collaboration across the robotics sector.