I talk with Animesh Garg,Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech and one of the leading voices in robot learning today:
We talk about growing up in India, building his first autonomous vehicle on a $280 budget after being rejected from a CMU program, and how that failure pushed him toward Berkeley, Stanford, and eventually NVIDIA Research. Animesh shares why he avoided computer science early on, what drew him to mechatronics, and how curiosity rather than planning shaped his entire career.
ORBIT and Isaac Lab, why simulation is now the backbone of robot learning, and how world models, reinforcement learning, and foundation models are lowering the barrier for people outside robotics to build real systems.
Animesh explains why he believes the most important robotics breakthroughs will come from people who are still in high school today.
A deeply personal conversation about grit, risk, redefining success, and why chasing interesting problems beats chasing money.
Building Deep Tech with Ilir Aliu