The Robot Report Podcast Plug-and-Play AI: Transforming Robotics with Modular Skills
Mar 6, 2026
Dinesh Narayanan, co-founder and CRO at General Robotics, who built the Grid platform to speed robotics deployment. He talks about Grid’s simulation-to-real pipelines and pre-integrated AI model library. He explains modular plug-and-play skills, model CI/CD for fleet updates, and integrating many OEM robots. He also covers agents, Copilot integration, and how Grid supports humanoid workflows.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Platform Approach To Speed Robotics Deployment
- General Robotics built Grid to be the fastest path from concept to deployed robotics solutions by unifying simulation, models, and deployment pipelines.
- The founding team left Microsoft to replicate the cloud-era productivity boost for robotics, reducing bespoke stack work for enterprises.
From Synthetic Data To Deployment Focus
- The original thesis emphasized synthetic data from simulation to train foundation models cheaply, but the company pivoted toward deployment value.
- As closed and open models proliferated, General Robotics prioritized getting any model onto robots reliably.
Grid's Four Pillars That Deliver Real Robots Fast
- Grid has four core components: simulation, robot deployment pipelines, pre-integrated AI models, and CI/CD for model distribution.
- They support NVIDIA Isaac Sim and AirGen, pre-wire ~50 models and integrate ~40 OEM robots to enable fast transfers to real hardware.