Episode 236 of The Robotic Report Podcast options Boris Sofman, co-founder and CEO of Bedrock Robotics. As well as, Brianna Wessling, affiliate editor for The Robotic Report, recaps her latest journey to NVIDIA GTC in San Jose, Calif.
Sofman describes Bedrock Robotics’ mission to develop autonomy applied sciences for development gear like excavators and bulldozers, because the San Francisco-based firm goals to make them totally operatorless.
He shares insights from his expertise at Waymo, highlighting parallels between autonomous autos and the automation of heavy equipment. Sofman additionally discusses the market alternatives in development and the problem of integrating AI with current equipment.
As well as, Boris explains the significance of security and his firm‘s instant targets, together with shifting from supervised autonomy to completely autonomous deployments.
Present timeline
- 0:30 – Brianna Wessling recaps GTC 2026
- 12:02 – Information of the week
- 25:10 – Boris Sofman, co-founder and CEO of Bedrock Robotics
Information of the week
Ottobot makes deliveries at a distant mine village in Australia
Ottobot shall be trialled by Sodexo Australia at Rio Tinto’s Gudai-Darri village in Australia. | Credit score: Ottonomy
Residents and visitors at a distant mining village in Western Australia’s Pilbara area might quickly be served by a brand new apprentice – an Ottobot robotic delivering meals and different gadgets on to their lodging.
Rio Tinto needed to cut back the variety of help workers onsite whereas bettering overhead and logistics. Sodexo Australia, which has 5,000 staff throughout greater than 100 websites, plans to trial the system on the mining firm’s Gudai-Darri village, north-east of Newman in Pilbara.
The residents stay in a secluded village whereas working on the mining web site. Meals service for the residents is supplied onsite by Sodexo, together with a number of eating places and a common retailer.
IntBot bets the way forward for humanoids on social intelligence, not kung fu
Entrance Desk Data Concierge assisted GTC26 guests with occasion info. | Credit score: The Robotic Report
In simply over a yr, IntBot has gone from idea to full‑physique humanoids greeting hundreds of visitors at NVIDIA’s GTC and in lodge lobbies. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup has used 24/7 interplay footage and sentiment evaluation to coach a social intelligence engine that sits on prime of off‑the‑shelf {hardware}.
At GTC 2026, CEO Lei Yang introduced that the corporate‘s IntEng “common social intelligence engine” now helps a number of humanoid and repair robots from totally different {hardware} distributors. He stated this marked a major step towards hardware-agnostic deployment of socially clever robots in real-world environments.
Brightpick launches Gridpicker for high-throughput achievement
Whereas automated storage and retrieval techniques, or ASRS, are well-established, new applied sciences promise to extend throughput. Brightpick this week unveiled Gridpicker, a achievement system that makes use of a grid framework, synthetic intelligence, and cellular manipulators constructed on its Autopicker expertise.
“We created Autopicker to assist operators obtain main value and labor financial savings whereas holding operations versatile,” said Jan Zizka, co-founder and CEO of Brightpick. “As deployments scaled, we noticed that a big section of the market, largely high-volume achievement facilities, wanted way more throughput and efficiency than AMR techniques might ship.”
“So we created Gridpicker by basically taking our Autopicker robots and putting them on a high-density grid,” he added. “It delivers shuttle-level efficiency with AMR-level simplicity at 40% decrease value in comparison with shuttles, delivering essentially the most versatile, scalable, highest-throughput ASRS for demanding warehouse environments.”
Brightpick claimed that its system can ship as much as twice the throughput per unit space in contrast with shuttle techniques, whereas maximizing labor financial savings and storage density. Brightpick will unveil it publicly at LogiMAT subsequent week.
