A community-submitted list of upcoming robotics, board game, and adjacent tech events around Boston and the Bay Area. Have something to share? Submit your event below — we’ll review and post approved submissions here.
🫘🌆 Boston
Silicon Photonics for LiDAR Sensors, Augmented Reality, Biophotonics, Quantum Engineering, and Beyond 💻 Tech & Community
When: September 11, 2026 @ 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT
Where: Harvard Pierce Hall, Room 209, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Host: Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
MIT professor Jelena Notaros presents silicon-photonics optical phased arrays and their applications in autonomous-vehicle LiDAR, augmented reality, biophotonics, and quantum engineering.
RoboBoston: 9th Annual Robot Block Party 🤖 Robotics
When: September 26, 2026 @ 10:45 AM – 4:00 PM
Where: Seaport, 88 Seaport Blvd, Boston, MA 02210
Host: MassRobotics
A free, public robotics festival — demos, hands-on interactions, and a sidewalk robot parade from universities, startups, and student teams. All ages welcome, come and go as you please.
Boston Robot Hackers: Arjun Viswanathan on Reinforcement Learning for Multimodal Locomotion 🤖 Robotics
When: October 15, 2026 @ 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Where: Artisans Asylum, 96 Holton Street, Allston, MA
Host: Boston Robot Hackers
Arjun Viswanathan shares a hierarchical reinforcement learning approach that teaches a legged-aerial robot both how to move and when to switch between walking and flying.
Minds in Motion @ MIT 💻 Tech & Community
When: October 30, 2026 @ 8:00 AM
Where: MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Dr, Cambridge, MA 02142
Host: Theo Ehrmann, John Werner & MassRobotics
A Tough Tech Week gathering of innovators and robotics enthusiasts at MIT. Registration requires host approval, so RSVP early.
Boston Robot Hackers: Yun Chang on Robot Scene Understanding for Extreme Environments 🤖 Robotics
When: November 12, 2026 @ 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Where: Artisans Asylum, 96 Holton Street, Allston, MA
Host: Boston Robot Hackers
Yun Chang shares lessons from the DARPA Subterranean Challenge and current work bringing autonomous scene understanding to heavy equipment.
🌉🌅 Bay Area
ULTIMATE GAME NIGHT: THE FINAL ROUND 🎲 Board Games
When: September 12, 2026 @ 7:00 PM – midnight
Where: Hacker Dojo, 855 Maude Ave, Mountain View, CA 94043
Host: Hacker Dojo
An action-packed game night featuring board and card games, classic video games, poker, Rock Band, and organized tournaments. Come to compete or just drop in and play.
Automated Happy Hour with Rodney Brooks 🤖 Robotics
When: September 22, 2026 @ 6:00 PM – 8:45 PM PDT
Where: Circuit Launch, Mountain View, CA (register for the exact address)
Host: Silicon Valley Robotics / Robots and Startups, with Automated Podcast
Join Brian Heater and the Automated Podcast crew for networking, robotics demos, and special guest Rodney Brooks. The live recording and talk run from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM, followed by a happy hour reception.
Advanced Vision & AI Conference 2026 🤖 Robotics
When: September 23, 2026 @ 7:30 AM – 6:30 PM; September 24 @ 7:30 AM – 4:00 PM
Where: Santa Clara Marriott, 2700 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Host: Association for Advancing Automation (A3)
A two-day technical conference focused on machine vision and AI for industrial automation, with practical sessions for engineers, integrators, and technology leaders.
RoboBusiness 2026 🤖 Robotics
When: October 20, 2026 @ 8:00 AM – 6:30 PM; October 21 @ 8:00 AM – 3:45 PM
Where: Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Pkwy, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Host: RoboBusiness
The robotics industry gathering brings founders, engineers, investors, and operators together for more than 40 sessions across five tracks on building and deploying commercial robots.
2026 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots 🤖 Robotics
When: December 6–9, 2026, program hours vary
Where: Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Pkwy, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Host: IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
A premier international forum on humanoid robotics, featuring public forums, workshops and tutorials, and two days of research presentations.
🤖🌎 Major Robotics Events
ROSCon Global 2026 🤖 Robotics
When: September 22–24, 2026, program hours vary (EDT). Opening-day registration: 7:00 AM – 5:30 PM; workshops: 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Where: Sheraton Centre Toronto, 123 Queen Street W, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Host: Open Robotics
A three-day conference for ROS developers of all levels, with workshops, technical talks, tutorials, demonstrations, and opportunities to meet the global ROS community.
Submit Your Event
Want to post an event here? For now, email us at contact@boardgamenightwg.com with the details — title, date and time, venue and address, host, a short description, and a link. We review each submission and post approved events on this page. Please reach out at least two weeks in advance when possible.