Robotics stack advances on three fronts: Google Cloud's ER2 brain hits preview
lmoroney · x · 2026-10-31
Lawrence Moroney analyzes three parallel fronts in the robotics stack. Cloud vendors want you to rent a high-level robot brain: on October 27, Google Cloud made Gemini Robotics Embodied Reasoning 2 available in public preview. DeepMind frames ER2 as a specialized high-level brain that reasons over video, plans across long horizons, and calls lower-level tools like vision-language-action models or navigation APIs, covering stationary arms through humanoids with multi-robot handoffs. Research labs want you to download ready-to-use vision-language-action policies. Hardware vendors want you to believe the warehouse floor and living room are both ready, with pre-order deposits as proof.
The author likes the momentum but wants receipts kept separate from press releases.
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