SolutionsIndustriesTechnologiesR&DProjectsAboutBlog  Robotics Integration  Industrial Automation  Mechanical Engineering  AI for Manufacturing  Digital Twin  Machine Vision  Physical AI  Factory AutomationCareersContactTalk to an engineer

Solution — Physical AI

Robots that generalise beyond the taught point.

Learned policies for tasks that resist explicit programming — contact-rich assembly, deformable materials, high-mix handling — trained in simulation and transferred to real hardware.

INFEED CONVEYOR OUTFEED / PALLET VISION STATION R1200 SAFETY FENCE — SIL 2 6200
FIG. — Policy evaluation cellSHEET RL-101 · REV C

Approach

Teach-and-repeat runs out where variation begins.

Classical robot programming is exact and, within its envelope, unbeatable. It fails when the part is flexible, the presentation varies, or the product mix changes faster than an engineer can re-teach. That boundary is where physical AI belongs — and recognising which side of it your task sits on is most of the engineering judgement.

We train in simulation with domain randomisation across lighting, friction, mass and geometry, then transfer to hardware with measured sim-to-real gap and a fallback to deterministic control. A learned policy that cannot be bounded and monitored does not go on a production line.

This is our most active research area. It is also the area where we most often advise a client that the conventional solution is the correct one — and we would rather tell you that in week one than in month six.

Scope

What is included.

Delivered as a defined scope with acceptance criteria, not as a time-and-materials estimate that drifts.

  • 01Task feasibility assessmentlearned vs deterministic decision
  • 02Simulation environment buildIsaac Lab, domain randomisation
  • 03Imitation learningteleoperated demonstration capture
  • 04Reinforcement learningreward shaping, curriculum
  • 05Vision-language-action policiesinstruction-conditioned control
  • 06World modelspredictive rollout for planning
  • 07Sim-to-real transfermeasured gap, calibration
  • 08Safety envelope designbounded authority, fallback control
  • 09On-robot evaluationsuccess rate under real variation
  • 10Continuous improvementdata flywheel from production

Applications

Where this is used.

Contact-rich assembly

Insertion, mating and alignment tasks where force feedback and adaptation beat a fixed path.

Deformable material handling

Cables, foam, textiles and films that no fixed gripper trajectory handles reliably.

High-mix picking

Policies that generalise across part variants without a new teach cycle per SKU.

Sim-to-real pipeline

Isaac Lab training with domain randomisation and quantified transfer gap on real hardware.

Bounded autonomy

Learned policies operating inside deterministic safety limits with a defined deterministic fallback.

Adaptive manufacturing R&D

Cells that re-plan from an updated CAD model instead of a manual re-teach.

Stack

Tools and platforms.

NVIDIA Isaac LabIsaac SimGR00TCosmosOpenUSDROS 2PyTorchImitation learningReinforcement learningDiffusion policiesVLA modelsWorld modelsDomain randomisationTeleoperationLeRobot

FAQ

Questions about physical ai

Is physical AI production-ready?

For a narrow set of tasks, yes — high-mix picking and some contact-rich assembly operations are running in production today. For general-purpose manipulation, no. We are candid about which category your application falls into, and the honest answer is often that conventional programming is still the right tool.

How much demonstration data do we need?

For an imitation-learned manipulation policy on a constrained task, typically a few hundred teleoperated demonstrations covering the real range of variation. Simulation with domain randomisation substantially reduces the real-world data requirement, but does not eliminate it.

What happens when a learned policy fails?

It must fail into a deterministic state. We design every deployment with a bounded operating envelope, confidence monitoring and an explicit fallback — stop safely, or hand over to a conventional program. A policy without a defined failure path is not a candidate for a production line.

How is this different from your robotics integration service?

Robotics integration delivers a cell that executes a defined, repeatable program. Physical AI addresses tasks where that program cannot be fully specified in advance. Most projects need the former; a growing minority genuinely need the latter, usually as one station inside an otherwise conventional line.

Next step

Ready to scope your next automation programme?

Send us a drawing, a cycle-time target or a line layout. Our engineers respond with a technical assessment — not a brochure.