Today’s robotics deployments suffer from steep integration costs. Simple components like a Sony IMX290 camera module can jump from $17 to $700+ when packaged for robotics applications. With countless markups like this one and challenging custom integration efforts, a $30k robot arm often turns into a $100k-$300k custom workcell by the time it’s deployed.

In Part 2 of this series, we explore how massive investments in Generative AI could reverse this trend, transforming robots from bespoke builds into teachable, mass-produced systems. GenAI enables new hardware & software tradeoffs in precision, reliability, and integration that can significantly reduce total system cost. That said, we’re still far from the levels of reliability needed for wide-scale deployment, especially in critical real-world environments.

We are witnessing a major shift in AI-powered robotics, as applications move from pre-programed, highly-repetitive tasks, to complex tasks requiring human-like intuition and reactiveness. This is enabling the next generation of robots to perform a broader set of labor-intensive work that is currently carried out by wage-earning blue-collar workers. For the first time ever, by combining GenAI with custom hardware, robots have an opportunity to capture a larger portion of the global blue-collar labor market (worth $Ts). This series unpacks how the audacious goals & promises of AI powered robots are suddenly so compelling and worth $bs of investment, despite barely any revenue to show for it (yet).

Perception-based closed-loop control (or “hand-eye coordination”) is transforming how AI-powered robot arms handle sensor data. This fundamental change can drive the next evolution in robot arm design, laying the groundwork for cheaper, easier-to-use, and more responsive robot arms, enabling robots to operate in chaotic, natural, & human-centric environments at a much lower cost.

Virtana, a robotics software development & outsourcing company, works with robotics companies all over the world, all while being based in Trinidad. Given the exponential growth in the field of robotics worldwide, there is a huge opportunity for companies like Virtana to increase Trinidad & Tobago’s impact & exports in the field of robotics. However, Virtana’s growth has been limited by its ability to hire local computer scientists, roboticists, & engineers. As such, the local mindset needs to change in several ways to help steer current students, young professionals, & experienced engineers towards cutting edge fields like robotics, and local companies like Virtana.

Today, Ethereum GPU mining is the norm, but the miners haven’t made the jump to running the ethereum mining/hashing algorithm, ethash, on specialized hardware solutions (e.g. FPGAs and ASICs). Here, I’ll walk through where Ethereum mining’s memory hardness comes from, and what the next generation of custom ethereum mining hardware might look like.