Robots can walk. They can dance. They can even do backflips.

But can they reliably fold your laundry, make coffee, or recover from mistakes in your kitchen?

In this episode, I sit down with robotics researcher Chris Paxton to talk about what’s actually hard about building intelligent robots.

We explore:

• Why robotics today is fundamentally different than it was 10 years ago
• The rise of world models and robot imagination
• Why contact and manipulation tasks are harder than navigation for robots
• The compounding error problem in long-horizon tasks
• Why robotics evaluation is still an unsolved challenge
• How new data pipelines and egocentric data are accelerating progress
  

If you’ve seen humanoids walking around conferences and wondered, “Are we really close?”, this episode brings clarity.

Follow Chris on X: @chris_j_paxton
Check out RoboPapers for deeper dives into robotics research: https://www.youtube.com/@RoboPapers

Tolga Kart spent seven years building massive 3D worlds for Call of Duty at Sledgehammer Games. Then he left gaming for Tesla Autopilot, led simulation at Parallel Domain, and now he's the CEO of Third Dimension AI, a company building neural simulators that reconstruct reality from sensor data.

In this episode, we dig into SuperSim, Third Dimension's first product, which takes driving logs and reconstructs them into photorealistic 4D environments where robots can train and validate their behavior. The results look so real that Tolga has to convince people they're not just watching video.

In this episode we discuss:
- How SuperSim reconstructs real-world scenes in hours, not months
- The difference between a "digital twin" and a "digital cousin"
- Why procedural generation hit its limits for robotics simulation
- The domain gap problem and why it's finally being solved
- Generating synthetic edge cases: erratic drivers, collapsing bridges, kids running into the street
- Why Gaussian Splatting is a good medium for robotics simulation
- What's next for simulation for humanoids, drones, and beyond

About Tolga Kart:
Tolga Kart is the Co-Founder and CEO of Third Dimension AI. He brings over 2 decades of experience building cutting-edge technology in gaming, autonomy, and AI. Tolga began his career in gaming, shipping two Call of Duty titles at Activision Games before transitioning to autonomous vehicles. At Tesla, he built the Autopilot TPM team and rebuilt the simulation team, fully integrating it into Autopilot's development framework. Most recently, he led and scaled Parallel Domain's engineering organization in two years.

Follow Tolga on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tolgakart/
Follow Tolga on X: https://x.com/tolgakart

About Third Dimensions AI:
Third Dimension AI is a spatial generation company building the 3D worlds that will power tomorrow's embodied AI—from robots to autonomous vehicles—and enable new frontiers of creativity in gaming and entertainment. Third Dimension was founded in 2024 and backed by venture capital firms Felicis, Abstract, Soma Capital, MVP Ventures, and Solari Capital.

To learn more, visit https://www.thirddimension.ai

Thanks to Lightwheel for making this episode possible. Learn about how Lightwheel is making physical AI successful at: https://www.lightwheel.ai

In this episode, Jonathan Stephens sits down with Kimate Richards, founder of 10Things, to explore what it really takes to deploy robots safely, reliably, and at scale.

With decades of experience across robotics, control systems, and large-scale automation—including firsthand exposure to some of the most complex robotics deployments in the world—Kimate brings a refreshingly practical perspective to an industry often distracted by flashy demos.

They unpack why robotics is fundamentally a systems problem, not just a hardware challenge, and why many robots fail when they leave the lab and enter real environments. Kimate explains his vision for 10Things as a kind of “Android operating system for robotics,” focused on developer productivity, simulation-to-real transfer, continuous learning, and safety-first design.

The conversation dives into:

• Why most robots break down outside ideal conditions
• The hidden complexity of deploying robots around people
• How simulation, reasoning models, and continuous feedback loops are changing robotics development
• What it will take for humanoid robots to be truly safe and useful in homes and workplaces
• Why standardization and shared “contracts” for robot behavior matter

This episode is a must-listen for anyone building, deploying, or thinking seriously about the future of robotics—from startups and researchers to product leaders and investors.

Watch Kimate's 10 Things Demo.

Thanks to Lightwheel for making this episode possible.