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 building 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 building and the problem of integrating AI with present equipment.
As well as, Boris explains the significance of security and his firm‘s rapid objectives, 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 can be trialled by Sodexo Australia at Rio Tinto’s Gudai-Darri village in Australia. | Credit score: Ottonomy
Residents and friends at a distant mining village in Western Australia’s Pilbara area could quickly be served by a brand new apprentice – an Ottobot robotic delivering meals and different gadgets on to their lodging.
Rio Tinto wished to cut back the variety of assist employees onsite whereas enhancing overhead and logistics. Sodexo Australia, which has 5,000 workers 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 Info 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 1000’s of friends 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 high 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 completely different {hardware} distributors. He mentioned this marked a big step towards hardware-agnostic deployment of socially clever robots in real-world environments.
Brightpick launches Gridpicker for high-throughput success
Whereas automated storage and retrieval methods, or ASRS, are well-established, new applied sciences promise to extend throughput. Brightpick this week unveiled Gridpicker, a success system that makes use of a grid framework, synthetic intelligence, and cellular manipulators constructed on its Autopicker know-how.
“We created Autopicker to assist operators obtain main value and labor financial savings whereas preserving operations versatile,” said Jan Zizka, co-founder and CEO of Brightpick. “As deployments scaled, we noticed that a big phase of the market, principally high-volume success facilities, wanted much more throughput and efficiency than AMR methods may ship.”
“So we created Gridpicker by primarily taking our Autopicker robots and inserting 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 methods, whereas maximizing labor financial savings and storage density. Brightpick will unveil it publicly at LogiMAT subsequent week.
