Edge Computing and AI: A Conversation with Ben Wolff

The Robot Report Podcast · 10 Oct 2025 · 1h 16m

AI in practice: one real use of AI described

What this episode covers

Ben Wolff, CEO of Palladyne AI (formerly Sarcos), discusses the company's pivot from hardware to a software-only model, focusing on Palladyne IQ for industrial robots and Palladyne Pilot for autonomous drone swarming. He explains the strategic advantages of edge computing for latency and security, the challenges of a 12-18 month sales cycle, and the company's commitment to building hardware-agnostic AI solutions that are indispensable to customers.

AI in practice

Where this conversation describes AI being used to build or deliver a product. Part of the AI in practice tracker.

Engineering & simulationPalladyne AI

Palladyne AI developed domain-specific language models narrowly tailored to run on edge hardware (NVIDIA/Qualcomm boards) to enable autonomous drone swarming and robot programming without cloud connectivity.

“we've had to tear narrowly tailor our what we call domain specific language models. to be able to be constrained enough, from both a compute perspective, an energy consumption perspective, to be able to be done right there on the machine.”

Speaker 5 · Hear it at 58:31

Mentioned

Companies
Palladyne AI, Sarcos, SoftBank, ABB Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Figure, Parallax Systems, Red Cat, Teal Drones, FANUC, Zebra, Hyundai, Kuka, Yaskawa
Products
Atlas, Figure 3, Pepper
Chips
NVIDIA

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