From Teach-and-Repeat to SelfPath AI: The next robotics leap

On the show today our guest is John Black, CTO of Brain Corp. John shares how Brain Corp has evolved from proving autonomous navigation in public spaces to operating at fleet scale across cleaning, scanning, retail analytics, and new manipulation use cases. He explains why the real challenge is not just making robots smarter, but building the guardrails, infrastructure, and platform reuse needed to deploy them safely and reliably in the real world. John joins Gene Demaitre and Mike Oitzman to unpack how Brain Corp moved from proving autonomous navigation in public spaces to operating fleet scales across cleaning, inventory intelligence, and shelf scanning. He explains why the company’s next leap is less about building one perfect robot and more about creating a platform that can support many robot form factors, many applications, and many customers at once. You’ll discover: Why public spaces are the hardest test for autonomous robots, and how Brain Corp designs for safety without killing productivity How Brain OS evolved into a full-stack platform with cloud infrastructure, OTA updates, manufacturing tools, trust centers, and fleet management Why 50,000 connected robots and tens of millions of operating hours create a data advantage smaller fleets simply cannot match If you want a clear-eyed look at where physical AI is headed — and what it takes to make robots commercially useful instead of just impressive — this episode delivers the strategy behind the scale. ### Register now for RoboBusiness 2026: https://cvent.me/w0eRN9?RefId=podcast