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Today’s show:
*When we think of “Physical AI,” most of us conjure images of humanoid robots and self-driving cars. But there’s a lot more to the category than just breakdancing Chinese bots and Waymos, from excavators autonomously digging tomorrows worksites, to a robot the size of four pizza boxes deploying to the ISS.
Guest host Alex Wilhelm sits down with three founders in the trenches of the Physical AI Space:
Boris Sofman of Bedrock Robotics, which builds autonomous construction equipment
Jeff Hawke of Odyssey, a frontier AI lab specializing in world models for robotics and video games
Ethan Barajas of Icarus Robotics, designers of the free-flying Joy robot that will join the ISS crew in 2027
Guests:
Boris Sofman on X: https://x.com/bsofman
Bedrock Robotics: https://bedrockrobotics.com/
Jeff Hawke on X: https://x.com/jeffrey_hawke
Odyssey: https://odyssey.ml/
Ethan Barajas on X: https://x.com/ethanbarajas11
Icarus Robotics: https://www.icarusrobotics.com/
Relevant Links
Bedrock Excavators Remove 65,000 Cubic Yards of Dirt: https://www.enr.com/articles/61982-bedrock-robotics-excavators-remove-65-000-cubic-yards-of-dirt-on-southwest-project
Odyssey $310M Series B article: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/17/world-model-maker-odyssey-nabs-1-45b-valuation-backed-by-amazon-and-other-big-names/
Icarus “Joyride” Mission announcement: https://thedebrief.org/icarus-is-building-the-robotic-labor-force-for-space-voyager-technologies-is-sending-a-next-generation-zero-gravity-robot-on-a-joyride-to-space/
PROWL: Prioritized Regret-Driven Optimization for World Model Learning: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.18803
NVIDIA Cosmos 3 report: https://research.nvidia.com/labs/cosmos-lab/cosmos3/technical-report.pdf
ISS Columbus Laboratory Module: https://www.nasa.gov/international-space-station/columbus-laboratory-module/
NASA’s Astrobee flying robot: https://www.nasa.gov/astrobee/
Voyager Technologies: https://www.voyagerspace.com/
Vast Space: https://www.vastspace.com/
Blue Origin’s New Glenn: https://www.blueorigin.com/new-glenn
“Red Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Mars-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0553560735
“Rendezvous with Rama” by Arthur C. Clarke: https://www.amazon.com/Rendezvous-Rama-Arthur-Clarke/dp/0553287893
Theo Von “This Past Weekend” podcast: https://www.theovon.com/podcast
Anthropic statement on Fable/Mythos suspension: https://www.anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access
Timestamps:
0:00 The Year of Physical AI
1:28 Why everyone's bullish on world models
7:03 Physical AI is harder, but probably bigger
9:08 How to think about world models
16:00 When data becomes "adversarial"
25:00 How Bedrock powers autonomous excavators
30:48 Why teleoperation gets a bad rap
39:10 Meet Joy the space robot
41:33 Laser comms coming to next-gen stations
46:29 Why everyone hates data centers
57:33 When does Claude Fable come back?
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