Auki CEO at Humanoid Hub: the bigger robotics opportunity is smarter environments, not smarter robots
broodsugar · x · 2026-11-13
Nils Pihl, Founder and CEO of Auki, argued at the Humanoid Hub Conference that while the robotics race focuses on building smarter robots, the bigger opportunity lies in smarter environments.
Key points:
- Deploying robots is a spatial awareness problem, not just manipulation: a large supermarket moves 100–200 products daily, so robots need maps that stay current.
- Big companies fear having their business copied, and regulators are moving fast on machine perception; keeping compute on-site rather than in the cloud protects data privacy and saves robot battery.
He also framed augmented reality as the future of language. Full keynote at the link.
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