AI x Robotics in Austin, TX

According to Statista current robotics market is $50B and it is going to grow to $220B by 2030 source. Essentially 4x growth is expected in 5 years, not too bad. To check the reality I visited the AI x Robotics Symposium in Austin Texas which was kindly organized by UT Austin and Austin Robotics. A few highlights from the symposium:

• Austin Robotics lab is fascinating with 20+ different robots that they work with. They have a huge area with many different types of robots there. Very impressive workshop with modern 3d printers, high power laser cutters and FMT and resin 3d printers.

• Academia is quite pessimistic about the robotics market in the next 3-5 years. They say there are a lot of missing bits and pieces in robotics and they do not expect quick adoption due to these significant gaps in the technology. Keynote speakers insisted on slow uptake in the robotics market despite their deep involvement with robotic startups.

• There were quite a few entrepreneurs in the symposium including those who build (have been creating)humanoid robots. Some presented their humanoids on the stage and demonstrated their robots which still have quite limited capabilities.

• Humanoid as a form factor is quite questionable. From one hand, we have all the things built for human hands and human height in house holds, from another, hands are quite hard to program and control.

Robotisists are consistent in their opinion on slow adoption, and here I listed the key gaps that prevent quick robots adoptions:

1. Lack of robust hand-inspired manipulators. We know this worked, when we see jungling robot which uses human-inspired fingers to throw and catch items.
2. Slow deployment rate for any robotic applications. We know it worked, when we see robots freely used among humans.
3. Robotic motors are still quite expensive, even though some robotic startups claim the reduction in cost in the recent years.
4. Lack of coherent safety framework for humanoid and domestic robots.
5. Lack of spatial awareness and spatial reasoning in modern LLMs, which we assume will be used for robot brains.

So despite high hype around robots it seems like we are going to see slow adoption especially in our house holds in the upcoming 5-10 years.

March 2025

First blog post

I am very excited to make my first blog post. AI world is changing very rapidly, it changes the way we interact with information creating enormous opportunities for creators and inventive minds. Here I am going to share some of the recent news, my thoughts and ideas in this space.

February 2025