Robotics Videos

IROS 2025 Keynotes - Embodied Intellgence: Fumiya Lida

Fumiya Lida’s IROS 2025 keynote framed embodied intelligence as the reciprocal relationship between a body’s physical dynamics and the brain’s control mechanisms, challenging the longstanding brain‑versus‑body dualism that has split robotics from AI. He highlighted the staggering scale gap—30 trillion cells in a human body versus a few million parts in the largest robots—underscoring how much richer biological embodiment is compared to current machines. Lida illustrated his points with a series of robots ranging from “brainless” sinusoidal locomotors that walk, hop and dance without sensors, to continuum‑beam walkers and multi‑material structures that exploit passive dynamics. A striking example was a soft hand equipped with 32 barometric sensors, allowing it to anticipate grasp failures before they occur, demonstrating how dense sensing and physical compliance can replace complex computation. He drew a provocative parallel between transformer models in generative AI and physical attention mechanisms in bodies, proposing an “embodied transformer” that would use reflex‑like pathways to process sensory input and generate motor output. This concept builds on the idea that reflex circuits achieve rapid, context‑aware responses without heavy learning, offering a blueprint for next‑generation robots. The talk concluded that to compete with the impact of generative AI, robotics must broaden its focus from narrow algorithmic tricks to holistic physical intelligence—leveraging soft materials, dense sensing, and embodied attention. Such integration promises more adaptable, resilient machines capable of operating in the messy real world, potentially reshaping manufacturing, service robotics, and human‑machine interaction.