Physical AI

A chatbot deals in words. Physical AI has to deal in weight, balance and other people’s feet.

The idea is to use one family of AI models for machines that see, move and act: a car reading traffic, or a humanoid turning toward a customer. XPENG uses the phrase for the shared software behind its cars and its IRON robot.

The hard part is that mistakes in the real world have consequences. A wrong word can be retyped; a wrong step ends with the robot on the floor.