Autonomy is where code meets the physical world—machines that perceive, reason, and act without people directing them. From vision-language robots and multi-agent goal inference to the power systems driving giant LLMs, this category tracks the breakthroughs, pitfalls, and engineering craft behind giving systems the judgment to work safely and independently alongside us.
This week I attended a DARPA workshop on the future and dimensions of agentic AI and also caught up with colleagues building flight-critical autonomy. Both communities use the word “autonomy,” but they mean different things. This post distinguishes physical autonomy (embodied systems operating in physics) from agentic AI (LLM-centered software systems operating in digital environments), […] read more
MIT soft robotics lab did an amazing job right at the intersection of physical systems, cyber and software. Small robots and insect-related autonomy have fascinated me for awhile. The autonomy of an insect brain is simple enough to just start to touch the boundaries of AI. The aero and mechanics of insects is still mind-bendingly […] read more
AI Systems Are Now Hunting Software Vulnerabilities—And Winning. Three months ago, Google Security SVP Heather Adkins and cryptographer Bruce Schneier warned that artificial intelligence would unleash an “AI vulnerability cataclysm.” They said autonomous code-analysis systems would find and weaponize flaws so quickly that human defenders would be overwhelmed. The claim seemed hyperbolic. Yet October and […] read more
In October 2024, the FlyWire consortium published the complete connectome of an adult Drosophila melanogaster brain: 139,255 neurons, 54.5 million synapses, 8,453 cell types, mapped at 8-nanometer resolution. This is only the third complete animal connectome ever produced, following C. elegans (302 neurons, 1986) and Drosophila larva (3,016 neurons, 2023). The 38-year gap between the […] read more
Researchers in China are crafting cyborg bees by fitting them with incredibly thin neural implants (article: Design of flight control system for honeybee based on EEG stimulation). The story isn’t that biology replaces electronics; it’s that biology supplies free actuation, sensing, and ultra low power computation that we can piggyback on with just enough silicon […] read more
Hello Gemini Robotics! Google surprised me a couple weeks ago with some cool tech. I’m watching carefully for the events that get AI into hardware and Vision Language Action has a lot of promise in creating more general and adaptable robots. It’s a good name — intelligence that integrates vision, language, and action—allowing robots to […] read more
One of the coolest challenges in robotics is to enabling machines to grasp the bigger picture from a small bit of human control. Imagine an operator guiding a single robot in a complex environment—the robot isn’t just executing isolated commands, but is part of a larger, dynamic mission. This is where multi-agent goal inference steps […] read more
Before ChatGPT, human looking robotics defined AI in the public imagination. That might be true again in the near future. With AI models online, it’s awesome to have AI automate our writing and art, but we still have to wash the dishes and chop the firewood. That may change soon. AI is finding bodies fast […] read more
The Growing Power Needs for Large Language Models In 2024, AI is awesome, empowering and available to everyone. Unfortunately, while AI is free to consumers, these models are expensive to train and operate at scale. Training them is expected to be the most expensive thing ever. Yes, more than the Manhattan project, pyramids and the […] read more
I lead autonomy at Boeing. What exactly do I do? We engineers have kidnapped a word that doesn’t belong to us. Autonomy is not a tech word, it’s the ability to act independently. It’s freedom that we design in and give to machines. It’s also a bit more. Autonomy is the ability to make decisions […] read more