Are world models the unlock for Physical AI? | Episode 19

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Today’s show:
*When we think of “Physical AI,” most of us conjure images of humanoid robots and self-driving cars. But there’s a lot more to the category than just breakdancing Chinese bots and Waymos, from excavators autonomously digging tomorrows worksites, to a robot the size of four pizza boxes deploying to the ISS.
Guest host Alex Wilhelm sits down with three founders in the trenches of the Physical AI Space:
Boris Sofman of Bedrock Robotics, which builds autonomous construction equipment
Jeff Hawke of Odyssey, a frontier AI lab specializing in world models for robotics and video games
Ethan Barajas of Icarus Robotics, designers of the free-flying Joy robot that will join the ISS crew in 2027
Guests:
Boris Sofman on X:x.com/bsofman
Bedrock Robotics:bedrockrobotics.com
Jeff Hawke on X:x.com/jeffrey_hawke
Odyssey:odyssey.ml
Ethan Barajas on X:x.com/ethanbarajas11
Icarus Robotics:icarusrobotics.com
Relevant Links
Bedrock Excavators Remove 65,000 Cubic Yards of Dirt:enr.com/articles/61982-bedrock-robotics-excava…
Odyssey $310M Series B article:techcrunch.com/2026/06/17/world-model-maker-od…
Icarus “Joyride” Mission announcement:thedebrief.org/icarus-is-building-the-robotic-…
PROWL: Prioritized Regret-Driven Optimization for World Model Learning:arxiv.org/abs/2605.18803
NVIDIA Cosmos 3 report:research.nvidia.com/labs/cosmos-lab/cosmos3/te…
ISS Columbus Laboratory Module:nasa.gov/international-space-station/columbus-…
NASA’s Astrobee flying robot:nasa.gov/astrobee
Voyager Technologies:voyagerspace.com
Vast Space:vastspace.com
Blue Origin’s New Glenn:blueorigin.com/new-glenn
“Red Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson:amazon.com/Red-Mars-Stanley-Robinson/dp/055356…
“Rendezvous with Rama” by Arthur C. Clarke:amazon.com/Rendezvous-Rama-Arthur-Clarke/dp/05…
Theo Von “This Past Weekend” podcast:theovon.com/podcast
Anthropic statement on Fable/Mythos suspension:anthropic.com/news/fable-mythos-access
Timestamps:
0:00 The Year of Physical AI
1:28 Why everyone's bullish on world models
7:03 Physical AI is harder, but probably bigger
9:08 How to think about world models
16:00 When data becomes "adversarial"
25:00 How Bedrock powers autonomous excavators
30:48 Why teleoperation gets a bad rap
39:10 Meet Joy the space robot
41:33 Laser comms coming to next-gen stations
46:29 Why everyone hates data centers
57:33 When does Claude Fable come back?
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