Schedule

Rust is gaining traction across industries—but can it become a cornerstone of automotive development? This talk explores Rust’s potential across embedded systems, infotainment, cloud services, and factory tools. How do C/C++ developers feel about Rust transition, what gaps remain in the ecosystem, and how to tackle both technical and organizational resistance. This session is ideal for teams exploring safer, modern tooling in safety-critical environments. It’s not just about code—it’s about adoption at scale.

Drawing from a high-altitude balloon case study, along with some key comparisons to the kind of Arduino programs that are the default for student experiments, this talk will make the argument that Rust is now perfectly positioned for the kind of microcontroller code common in education contexts. This talk will be relevant to anyone exploring or teaching microcontroller programming, especially those with some exposure to the Arduino Framework, along with anyone interested in exploring Rust in a context they might not be familiar with.

This talk distills key insights from the ICRA25 (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation) workshop, presenting a comprehensive overview of how Rust is addressing critical pain points in robotics development. The robotics community is at an inflection point, seeking alternatives to traditional languages that struggle with memory safety and concurrency issues. This session provides a timely exploration of Rust’s potential to revolutionize how we build autonomous systems, offering attendees practical guidance on adoption pathways and highlighting real-world success stories. By bridging the academic research presented at ICRA with practical industry applications, this talk offers unique value to those interested in systems programming for safety-critical applications.