Robotics and physical AI are advancing rapidly, and they are becoming real-world work for industries. In manufacturing, logistics, and even healthcare, these ‘thinking machines’ are helping companies boost efficiency, automate repetitive tasks, and handle tricky physical jobs.
In this episode of the Analytics Insight Podcast, we dig into how robotics and physical AI are reshaping the future of industries worldwide. Supriya Rathi, Physical AI Advocate, and India’s no.1 Robotics Communicator, shares her take on how robotics has been evolving, why physical AI is getting more relevant every year, and what the possibilities are, as well as the hurdles for India in the bigger, global robotics community.
Ans: I've always been intrigued about robots. Since I was a child, I used to read a lot of science fiction. That led me to do my master's in robotics from the UK, and ever since then, I've been involved in this field. Back then, say in 2013, when I passed out, there was absolutely nothing in the field of robotics.
Over a period of time, I have kind of evolved my roles. Currently, I help brands with their growth and community building. As a robotics consultant, I've built a community online as well, through LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
Ans: AI right now, you know, it started with manipulating just text, and then it converts text into images, into videos, and most importantly, converts all the data into usable outputs. So what's the next thing after all of it that it's already done, right? That's when robotics was also kind of finally evolving since the last 20 years, wherein there were a few companies that were trying to figure out a way of putting these physical models into action, but it was getting very difficult.
Ans: We have all heard of AGI. That's, you know, Artificial General Intelligence. Before that, we'd come up with something called ANI, which is Artificial Narrow Intelligence. So, it's Artificial Narrow Intelligence, then General Intelligence, and then Super Intelligence.
In terms of the things that we use and the way people are in any sector, say, medical or agriculture, or be it cooking, having robots, and, you know, all these fields being underwater robotics and all of those things. So, like, there's a lot to play around here. Like, you know, there's gravity, there's force, there's texture, materials, there's, like, a lot of physics involved.
Ans: Robots are basically kind of like how the buzzwords are saying that they are replacing humans. That's not entirely or directly true. When you see around the world, you can see most of the country's populations are kind of decreasing, right? Like they don't, genuinely don't find people for that particular job. That's why they needed something to replace that vacuum in their society. That's when robots kind of fit in really well for them.
Having said that, when we come back to India, and we see the population of India as compared to the world, we are right now at number one, right? So the question is, do we really require robots in India? We don't really require robots in India. We still have a long way to go.
What are some of the biggest challenges these systems are facing in terms of operational efficiency and how do you think we can tackle them?
Ans: In terms of operational efficiency, the number one thing that we are facing is the challenging supply chain of the components that are being used in a robot. That is across all countries around the world. The only country, kind of, that seems to have cracked this supply chain issue is China. So that is really challenging for most parts of the world, including India, which is getting all the components at a very good rate here in the country itself and then building it in India.