Post by Kateryna Portmann, MBA

This year I missed World Economic Forum and AI House Davos, but many peers who were there shared one consistent theme: Physical AI is no longer a concept — it’s becoming industrial reality. A few reflections on where we actually are today: Quadruped robots have quietly moved from demos to duty. In logistics, inspection and infrastructure monitoring, they’re already delivering ROI. Robust mobility, falling costs and AI-driven perception make them the most deployable autonomous systems right now. Humanoids remain the most ambitious frontier. From Boston Dynamics evolution to Tesla Optimus vision and a fast-growing ecosystem of challengers, progress is real — but deployment is still early. Productivity, safety validation and reliability at scale are the next hard gates. The real winners aren’t defined by form factor alone. They’re the systems that combine perception, reasoning and action — AI that can safely operate in unstructured, human environments. This is where embodied intelligence shifts automation from fixed workflows to adaptive collaboration. My takeaway: 1) Quadrupeds are winning today on practicality and adoption 2) Humanoids are winning attention and long-term ambition 3) Physical AI is winning the strategic race (but where is real proven use case)? Today phase of industrial transformation won’t be about replacing humans — it will be about scaling intelligent machines that can work alongside them, reliably and at scale. Personally, I’m most interested in where real deployments beat the hype — what are you seeing on factory floors that actually brings value today? Women in Robotics Switzerland Robert MacKenzie Sylvia Stocker Andie Zhang Alessandro Palleschi Antoine Leeman Niloofar Shamsabadi Ayla Watsuji Nazrin Aliyeva Moritz Baecher Mukta Prasad Marcin Dymczyk Maryam Rezayati Nitish Kumar Nicola Tomatis Brad Nelson Benjamin Chan René Vogel (Mr. Vision) Vanessa Loiola Xavier Guidetti Xavier Quintanilla Xavier Ballester Pavel Zakharov Lisa Mareschal Linus Andreas G. Katerina Polovinko Johannes Pankert Jonas Wüst Huub Hendrikx Zoe Hoek Howard Wright Filippo Spinelli Dario Floreano Deepana Ishtaweera Stephan-Daniel Gravert Philippe Hegi 🤖 P.S. pictures are from the last year, it looks like this year it was sunnier 🌞 #Robotics #PhysicalAI #womeninrobotics #IndustrialAutomation #Humanoids #Quadrupeds #AI #FutureOfWork #WEF