From teach and repeat to SelfPath AI: The next robotics leap

John Black, chief technology officer at Brain Corp, discussed scaling robot fleets and building trust in public spaces on The Robot Report Podcast, where he highlighted the company's fleet of over 50,000 autonomous mobile robots that have logged more than 25 million hours of safe operation powered by BrainOS. The episode also covered news including XPeng Motors' humanoid robot unit Dogotix raising $900M, Generalist securing $200M in funding, NVIDIA's Jetson Orin Nano 2 doubling inference performance, and Symbotic taking the No. 1 spot in warehouse automation.

In Episode 259 of The Robot Report Podcast, the topic is scaling robot fleets and building trust while operating in public spaces. Our guest is John Black, chief technology officer at Brain Corp https://www.therobotreport.com/tag/brain-corp/ . He has commercialized a fleet of over 50,000 autonomous mobile robots AMRs https://www.therobotreport.com/category/robots-platforms/amrs/ , which have logged more than 25 million hours of safe, real-world operation powered by BrainOS. A Carnegie Mellon University graduate, Black is a TÜV Rheinland-certified functional safety engineer and serves as board chair for the UC San Diego https://www.therobotreport.com/tag/university-of-california-san-diego/ Jacobs School of Engineering Corporate Affiliates Program. Show timeline - 10:00 – News of the week - 25:43 – John Black https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-b-22744b8/ , CTO, Brain Corp News of the week XPeng Motors humanoid robot unit Dogotix raises $900M https://www.therobotreport.com/xpeng-motors-humanoid-robot-unit-dogotix-raises-900m/ Generalist https://www.therobotreport.com/tag/generalist/ brings in another $200M in funding https://www.axios.com/2026/08/24/robotics-ai-generalist-200m as it updates its model https://generalistai.com/blog/gen-1.5 Jetson Orin Nano 2 doubles inference performance for robotics on the edge, says NVIDIA https://www.therobotreport.com/jetson-orin-nano-2-doubles-inference-performance-robotics-edge-says-nvidia/ Symbotic takes No. 1 in warehouse automation, according to Interact Analysis https://www.automatedwarehouseonline.com/symbotic-takes-no-1-warehouse-automation-market-share-says-interact-analysis/ Sponsors Thanks to our sponsors who make this content possible. To learn how you can sponsor a future episode of The Robot Report Podcast, contact Jami Brownlee at email protected /cdn-cgi/l/email-protection dbb1b9a9b4acb5b7bebe9bbaa9a9b4acbdb7a2f5b8b4b6 Would you like to be a guest on a future episode? Contact Mike Oitzman at email protected /cdn-cgi/l/email-protection c5a8aaacb1bfa8a4ab85a4b7b7aab2a3a9bceba6aaa8