Hardware Podcasts

Hands-on Physical AI with Kevin Cloutier

The Amp Hour · 26 Aug 2026 · 58m · Episode 732

What this episode covers

Kevin Cloutier, North American Lead for Physical AI at a global engineering consulting firm, explains the transition from legacy, statically programmed industrial robots to modern systems using imitation learning and 'Physical AI.' He details how to build and calibrate the affordable $200 3D-printed SO101 robot arm using the LeRobot open-source framework or Intel’s Physical AI Studio, orchestrating complex robotic systems entirely on local edge hardware. Cloutier contrasts the high cost and complexity of humanoids with the practical utility of specialized arms, while discussing the democratization of AI through small language models and local inference on SOCs with integrated GPUs and NPUs.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Universal Robots, ABB, NVIDIA
Products
SO101
Tools
LeRobot, Intel Physical AI Studio, ROS2, OpenVINO, Ollama
Also
Small VLA

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