physical-ai
(84)
Fred Swaniker and the headmaster’s unfinished assignment
At 18, he was running a school in Botswana. Now the founder of Sand Technologies is connecting African talent with global infrastructure problems, while pursuing a goal of developing three million leaders by 2035.
Igor Marinelli and the value of an uneventful day
His father spent 35 years keeping factory machinery running. Igor Marinelli built Tractian around the people who get called when it stops.
Asad Tirmizi and the education of a robot
Before he co-founded Trener Robotics, Asad Tirmizi studied how machines communicate through touch. Now he wants factory robots to learn enough about a job that people can stop explaining every movement.
Pete Florence and the trouble with ordinary things
A shoe, a drawer, a block that must fit into a slot. The Generalist co-founder has built a research career around teaching robots the physical skills people rarely stop to explain.
Alexandre de Vigan and the trouble with a perfect picture
Alexandre de Vigan left mergers and acquisitions law to change how people see products online. Building Nfinite led him to a harder question: what does a machine need to know about the world behind the picture?
Hamza Derbas and the case for starting on the factory floor
After nearly nine years at Apple, Hamza Derbas founded Maven Robotics with his brother Khalid. His wager begins with a warehouse job, a pair of wheels, and a willingness to change the machine when the work demands it.
Jacomo Corbo and the cost of one more experiment
A Formula One strategist learns to make decisions before the opportunity disappears. At PhysicsX, Jacomo Corbo is applying that lesson to the time engineers spend waiting for answers.
Raghib Hussain and the value of a second beginning
After building Cavium and helping steer Marvell toward data infrastructure, Raghib Hussain took on an older company with a fresh start. At Altera, his wager is that programmable chips need a more predictable business behind them.
Vijay Chattha would like a word. Six, preferably.
Before he helped startups find their voice, Vijay Chattha helped Philadelphia find a night out. The VSC founder, investor and Punjabi funk rapper has been working on the same problem ever since: giving people a reason to pay attention.
Colin Angle’s unfinished business with the living room
He helped put the Roomba in millions of homes. With Familiar Machines & Magic, Colin Angle is returning to an older ambition: a robot people want around for its company.
Felipe Chávez Cortés and the trouble with the last 200 meters
He brought delivery robots to Berkeley. Every job they finished revealed another one waiting - and helped turn Kiwibot into Robot.com.
Jackie Wu and the problem of knowing what you own
Before Corvus Robotics, Jackie Wu tried to put a flying camera in the home. His next bet took indoor drones into warehouses, where a misplaced pallet can make a perfectly good computer tell a perfectly bad lie.
AJ Meyer and the education of a box picker
AJ Meyer went looking for a robot business and found a stubborn job at the warehouse door. Building Pickle Robot has required him to teach machines how to handle boxes - and teach himself how to keep a company’s promises.
Henrik Bennetsen and the distance between an idea and a business
From a Danish music career to virtual worlds, drywall robots and butter made without farming, Henrik Bennetsen keeps returning to the same problem: getting an invention into everyday life. The Savor co-founder now works on the business of physical AI at Formant.
Danny Bernstein and the distance between a robot and a strawberry
After a decade at Google and a turn at Microsoft, Danny Bernstein put his next venture on working farmland. At Reservoir, the shortest route from an idea to a useful machine runs through the people who grow the crop.
Lior Susan and the unfinished business of the factory
A banana farm, a mobile-network startup, and a factory floor led Lior Susan to Eclipse. His wager: the next generation of technology companies will have to build the physical world, too.
Alexander Torrey and the trouble with the empty bottle
A box of hand soap sent Alexander Torrey looking for a better supply chain. After children’s art and reusable deliveries, the AIC co-founder is taking his argument about wasted potential to America’s factory floors.
Chris Carson and the city hiding in a camera
A bus driver’s camera button gave Chris Carson an idea for Hayden AI. His next company, EchoTwin AI, widens the view to city infrastructure, while a dispute with his former company complicates the picture.
Kenji Nakashima and the last turn before arrival
From Oracle and Google Cloud to Applied Intuition, Kenji Nakashima has spent his career bringing software into Japan’s automotive business. His current work reaches a particularly revealing destination: the loading bay.
Vik Bajaj and the Long Road from a Drawing to a Jet Engine
A physicist who once studied how to see inside matter now wants to shorten the years between an engineer’s idea and a finished machine. At Prometheus, Vik Bajaj is taking that question to the scale of an industry.
Ali Agha Has Spent His Career Preparing Robots for the Unexpected
From robot soccer to unmapped caves, Ali Agha kept asking what a machine should do when the plan fails. At FieldAI, that question has become a business built around robots working in the messy world outside the lab.
Barak Bar-Cohen Put the Factory on Wheels
The former Bai operator turned a stubborn variety-pack problem into a mobile manufacturing company. Its name carries a clue from Mars, and its machines are designed to arrive where the work already is.
Qasar Younis Took the Long Road Back to the Car
A farm childhood, a Detroit engineering education and a tour through Google and Y Combinator led Qasar Younis back to moving machines - this time with software meant to teach them how to think.
Andrew Lonsberry and the Factory That Learned to See
He grew up welding beside his father, studied how machines learn, and stayed in Ohio when the usual startup map pointed west. Now Andrew Lonsberry is asking robots to master the unruly work that factories could never quite automate.
Soulaiman Itani Has Spent a Career Moving Intelligence Off the Screen
From drones and gestural glasses to autonomous trucks, the engineer’s work keeps returning to one question: how does intelligence leave the screen and enter the physical world?
Troy Demmer Is Teaching Machines to Read the Rust
A finance graduate went looking for better diagnoses and found them inside boilers, warships, and factories. At Gecko Robotics, Troy Demmer has made a career of turning hard-to-reach metal into data people can act on.
Paul Mikesell Took AI Out of the Cloud and Put It in the Dirt
After years spent scaling storage, databases and machine learning, the Seattle engineer found his most demanding computer at ground level - where dust, weather and skeptical farmers make every elegant idea prove itself.
Alex Lonsberry Taught a Robot to Notice the Mess
A childhood spent building in an Ohio garage led to a doctoral lab, a stubborn sheet of shiny steel and a company built around one unfashionable truth: the real world refuses to hold still.
Abhinav Gupta Taught Machines to Look. Now He Wants Them to Learn by Doing.
For two decades, Abhinav Gupta has argued that intelligence comes from contact with the world. His route from computer vision lab to factory floor is a story of fewer labels, more experiments, and robots finally learning on the job.
Eva Na Is Making the Invisible Infrastructure of AI Feel Useful
Tuya Smart's CMO has spent years translating clouds, protocols and connected devices into a human proposition. Her latest argument is simpler still: AI matters most when it leaves the screen and begins helping the physical world make better decisions.