Industrial AI Podcast

Tobias Ortmeier, robotics and automation expert and co-founder of Voraus Robotic, brings electrical engineering and medical-robotics roots to industrial automation. He discusses where generative AI and agents can help production, real-world pick-and-place trials, greenfield vs brownfield tradeoffs, and why human‑in‑the‑loop workflows currently outperform fully autonomous runs.

Explore how AI transforms hidden expertise into actionable insights. From Festo to future factories, discover the new era of intelligent search. In this episode, we dive into the real-world impact of AI-powered knowledge platforms for industry. We sit down with Jakub from Zeta Alpha to uncover how companies like Festo are leveraging advanced search, RAG, and agentic AI to unlock decades of expertise buried in documents and data silos. We share practical examples, discuss integration challenges, and debate the future of specialized versus generic AI in the industrial landscape. You'll hear why trust, customization, and domain focus are key for adoption – and how European innovation is shaping sovereign AI solutions. Join us as we reveal what it really takes to turn industrial knowledge into a competitive advantage.

Jakub Tomczak, professor and AI researcher specializing in neurosymbolic methods and world models, discusses the resurgence of world models. He contrasts symbolic and physics‑based approaches with pure data‑centric models. He explores Europe’s strengths, the role of domain expertise and simulators, and why smarter, domain-aware methods may outpace blind scaling.

Leonardo Barcellona, a robotics researcher at the University of Amsterdam focused on reward and world models, discusses the 'digital cousin' idea as a more varied, robust alternative to perfect digital twins. He explains how using diverse simulated relatives improves real-world transfer. Short, concrete examples and implications for training, reconstruction, and industrial deployment are explored.

André Sagodi, a manufacturing and innovation lead at Audi with experience scaling AI-based computer vision in production. He discusses scaling crack-detection from pilot to global rollout. Topics include system architecture for one-model approaches, data and labeling strategies, edge vs cloud deployment, and organizational moves needed to turn pilots into production-ready solutions.

Stanisław Jastrzębski, CTO and co-founder of Molecule One, builds AI and automated labs to speed drug discovery. He discusses the upheaval of traditional SaaS by LLM-driven agents. Then he dives into marrying generative chemistry with miniaturized synthesis, high-throughput data generation, and practical automation strategies.

Norbert Jung, CEO of Bosch Connected Industry and manufacturing tech leader, discusses scaling innovation, agentic AI in factories, and the role of semantic data and digital twins. He describes real shopfloor AI deployments, why humans stay central, and the challenges of industrial‑grade AI like traceability, security, and workforce transformation.

John Harrington, Co-founder and CPO at HighByte, a leader in Industrial DataOps. He breaks down MCP and why curated, contextualized data matters for connecting factory systems to intelligent agents. They talk MCP vs OPC/MQTT, HighByte’s agent features, tool curation to reduce hallucinations, and how data orchestration scales access from historians to cloud services.

Discover how inline AI transforms manufacturing, boosts robustness, and redefines European efficiency. Precision meets innovation in real-world production. In this episode, I dive deep into the future of industrial AI with Andreas de Jonge, exploring how inline AI is reshaping real-world manufacturing. We discuss why tailored, ultra-efficient AI models can outperform bulky, generic solutions—especially in Europe’s highly specialized industries. Andreas shares how his company’s EdgeBrain device brings intelligence directly to the data stream, enabling plug-and-play integration and unprecedented robustness for even the oldest production lines. Together, we unpack the challenges of brownfield integration, the power of synthetic data, and the path to true European digital sovereignty. If you’re curious about the next wave of industrial automation and what it means for productivity, this conversation is not to be missed. Siemens https://www.siemens.com/global/en.html EdgeBrain [https://dejonge.ai/en) FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmablegatearray TensorFlow https://www.tensorflow.org/ PyTorch https://pytorch.org/ ONNX (Open Neural Network Exchange) https://onnx.ai/ Teacher-Student Model (Knowledge Distillation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_distillation Industrial Ethernet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Ethernet Brownfield Integration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownfield(softwaredevelopment) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmannedaerialvehicle PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmablelogiccontroller

A few months ago we interviewed Albert van Breemen and he presented his cucumber robot. Now they developed an industrial solution. In this episode, we dive into the evolution of AI robotics, exploring how lessons from cucumber-picking robots are now revolutionizing industrial inspection. We sit down with Wouter from VBTI to unpack the journey from complex greenhouse challenges to the development of Adam One—an inspection robot that doesn’t just automate, but truly understands the task at hand. We reflect on the unique technical hurdles, the fusion of multiple AI models, and the potential for scalable, domain-specific foundation models. As always, we bring our authentic curiosity and skepticism to the latest industry trends, from federated learning revivals to the shifting boundaries of edge and cloud AI. Join us for a conversation that connects practical innovation with the big questions shaping industrial AI. Siemens https://www.siemens.com/global/en.html Roland Busch https://new.siemens.com/global/en/company/about/management/roland-busch.html CES (Consumer Electronics Show) https://www.ces.tech/ Bosch https://www.bosch.com/ Yann Le Cun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yann_LeCun Federated Learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_learning OPC Foundation https://opcfoundation.org/ OPC UA (Unified Architecture) https://opcfoundation.org/about/opc-technologies/opc-ua/ Resource Description Framework (RDF) https://www.w3.org/RDF/ Boston Dynamics Atlas https://www.bostondynamics.com/atlas/ Hyundai Motor Group https://www.hyundai.com/worldwide/en/company/newsroom/hyundai-motor-group-completes-acquisition-of-boston-dynamics-0000016337 Neura Robotics https://www.neura-robotics.com/ European Robotics Forum https://erf2024.eu/ World Economic Forum (Davos) https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024/ The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheMagicMountain Path Robotics https://www.path-robotics.com/ ASML https://www.asml.com/ Blender https://www.blender.org/ Moondream (Vision Language Model) https://github.com/itsnamgyu/moondream VBTI https://www.vbti.nl/ Adam One (Inspection Robot) https://www.vbti.nl/adam-one/