Robotics | Techlist.io

figmaFeb 12, 20253 min readCurated summary

Meet the Makers Defining Tech’s Next Chapter | Figma Blog

The post previews Config 2025 and introduces speakers exploring how technology can become more human-centered. Their work spans AI-native devices, creator tools, AI interfaces, and expressive robotics. Together, they suggest that technology’s next chapter will depend not only on technical capability, but also on accessibility, empathy, and thoughtful design. ## Config 2025 and Its Vision - Figma’s Config conference will take place in San Francisco from May 6–8 and in London on May 14. - The event will examine how AI and automation are changing the way people create and experience technology. - Figma emphasizes tools and experiences that respond to evolving human needs. - In-person London tickets are sold out, while San Francisco tickets and free virtual attendance remain available. ## Building the Next Computing Platform - Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Meta’s CTO and Head of Reality Labs, began coding through a 4-H club and later taught Mark Zuckerberg’s AI class at Harvard. - As Facebook’s 10th engineer, he helped create the News Feed. - He now leads Meta’s work on AR glasses, mixed-reality headsets, and the metaverse. - Bosworth envisions AI-native devices and proactive, personalized assistants becoming part of everyday computing. - At Config, he will discuss Meta’s efforts to develop a new computing platform. ## Making Creator Tools More Inclusive - Ebi Atawodi, Director of Product Management for YouTube Studio, combines experience in literature, technology, and product leadership. - Her work focuses on helping creators develop ideas and reach new audiences, including through AI-powered features. - Atawodi stresses that technology must be accessible and designed for people who have historically felt excluded by products. - Her approach centers on creating tools that serve a broad range of creators rather than assuming a single user experience. ## Designing Interfaces for Advanced AI - Joel Lewenstein, Head of Product Design at Anthropic, works on the interface for Claude. - He compares designing AI systems to watching a child discover new abilities, highlighting the uncertainty and possibility of emerging technology. - AI’s growing sophistication challenges traditional assumptions about how software interfaces should work. - Lewenstein argues that strong designers are defined more by how they think than by experience in a particular industry. ## Giving Robots Personality - Dr. Madeline Gannon uses her research studio, Atonaton, to transform industrial robots into expressive, lifelike mechanical creatures. - Supported by a Knight Foundation grant, she investigates how art and empathy can influence relationships with autonomous machines. - Her work explores how easily people attribute life and intention to nonliving objects. - Rather than reproducing the complexity of the human mind, Gannon demonstrates how movement, appearance, and context can make robots feel animated. Config’s featured makers represent a broad view of technological progress: more capable devices and systems must also be accessible, intuitive, expressive, and emotionally resonant. The conference aims to explore that balance through the experiences of people actively shaping AI, design, and robotics.

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Robotics AI Augmented Reality Virtual Reality+4

figmaJun 25, 20243 min readCurated summary

Are we finally entering the age of androids? | Figma Blog

Humanoid robots are moving from science fiction into public spaces and workplaces, forcing people to confront both the promise and risks of embodied AI. Their humanlike form makes technology more intuitive and emotionally engaging, but it also encourages people to project intelligence, intention, and personality onto machines. The article argues that designers must shape this illusion carefully, using humanoid robots to foster connection and understanding rather than control or deception. ## Humanoids as Technology in Human Form - Ameca, created by Engineered Arts, performs at Las Vegas’s Sphere as an interactive entertainer. - It turns toward speakers, displays facial expressions, tells jokes, and responds conversationally. - Its appeal comes from combining AI with expressive robotics. - Apollo, developed by Apptronik and argodesign, represents a different model: - It is designed as a general-purpose laborer. - Its flat face, cameras, and LED mouth prioritize function over lifelike appearance. - Humanoid robots have deep cultural roots, appearing in Greek mythology, Taoist philosophy, and science fiction. - Their human form makes software easier to engage with through gestures, expressions, and face-to-face interaction—what Engineered Arts CEO Will Jackson describes as a heads-up alternative to screen-based technology and virtual reality. ## What the Illusion of Sentience Unlocks - Humans naturally anthropomorphize objects and search for faces, motives, and signs of life. - Madeline Gannon uses body language and animal behavior as inspiration for designing industrial robots with recognizable personalities. - Even simple geometric animations can appear intentional: the Heider and Simmel experiment showed that people assign motives to moving shapes. - Ameca intensifies this effect through: - Furrowed brows, smiles, and expressions of surprise - Celebrity impressions - Custom personalities created by a dedicated “Persona Architect” - The ability to switch behavioral modes depending on context - Engineered Arts deliberately avoids making Ameca appear fully human: - Its metallic body avoids realistic skin. - It has no defined race or gender. - Its artificiality makes the theatrical nature of the interaction more visible. - The technology underneath remains impersonal: AI interprets language and maps it to suitable facial expressions. Nevertheless, users can experience meaningful emotional moments, such as a shy attendee gaining confidence while speaking Japanese with Ameca. - Gannon argues that designers must make complex systems legible, much as everyday objects communicate how they should be used. - She sees design as a way to redirect technology toward curiosity, kindness, and care, creating relationships based on connection rather than control. ## Designing Androids for Work - Apollo does not claim to be sentient; its purpose is practical labor. - It is being developed to address worker shortages, including work in Mercedes-Benz factories and potentially space exploration. - Its humanoid shape is primarily a response to human-scale environments and tools. - Unlike Ameca, Apollo must appear approachable enough for workers to accept, while avoiding the uncanny valley. - The article frames this as a central design challenge: workplace robots need to communicate socially without misleading people about what they are. Humanoid robots are most valuable when their appearance and behavior clarify how people should interact with them. Whether used for entertainment or labor, designers should treat the illusion of intelligence as an ethical material—balancing emotional engagement with transparency and purposeful design.

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Robotics AI Large Language Models Automation+3

figmaJun 25, 20242 min readCurated summary

Welcome to The Prompt | Figma Blog

AI may transform design and building, but its ultimate impact remains unsettled. Figma’s *The Prompt* explores that uncertainty through essays and interviews with experts across design, engineering, product development, and the built environment. The collection argues that human judgment—especially the ability to ask thoughtful, well-framed questions—will remain central to making AI useful. ## Prompting as a Creative Discipline - Prompt engineering is described as the practice of getting better answers by asking better questions. - Like interviewing or editing a magazine, effective prompting requires: - Clear context - Thoughtful framing - Useful guidance - AI’s capabilities are treated as largely inert without human direction; people must coax useful results from the technology. - The act of questioning is presented as a fundamentally human and creative instinct. ## The Purpose of *The Prompt* - Created by Figma’s Story Studio and Brand Studio, the magazine launched at Config 2024. - It combines writing, interviews, and illustrations to examine how AI is changing creative and technical work. - Contributors come from both inside and outside Figma and work across: - Design - Engineering - Product development - Robotics - Manufacturing - Residential housing ## Questions About AI’s Future The magazine uses a range of prompts to investigate both immediate applications and larger societal questions, including: - What constitutes good design when AI can generate and automate more work? - Whether code becoming a commodity should be feared - How much data is actually necessary - How starting with imperfect or incomplete ideas can shape innovation - Whether AI development can move beyond technological echo chambers - If efficiency undermines creativity - How to build AI features that people both want and trust - The relationship between artificial design intelligence (ADI) and artificial general intelligence (AGI) - Whether automation can unlock the full potential of design systems - The role of robots in construction and housing - Whether society is entering an age of androids ## Practical and Long-Term Perspectives - Contributors examine ambitious challenges, such as applying AI to manufacturing and housing. - They also focus on what AI can deliver reliably today rather than only speculating about distant possibilities. - The goal is to make complex systems more understandable and usable while learning how to guide AI more effectively. Figma presents *The Prompt* as both a magazine and an experiment in inquiry: meaningful progress with AI depends not just on increasingly capable systems, but on humans asking clearer, more imaginative, and more responsible questions.

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Robotics AI Design Systems Large Language Models+4

figmaJun 25, 20243 min readCurated summary

Should robots be building our homes? | Figma Blog

Icon CEO Jason Ballard argues that robotics and AI could make housing faster, cheaper, more durable, and more sustainable. Icon’s robots 3D-print cement-based walls, while its Vitruvius AI system is intended to generate designs, budgets, schedules, and eventually robotic construction instructions. Ballard sees the same technologies eventually supporting construction beyond Earth, including on the Moon. ## From Housing Mission to Robotics - Ballard’s interest in construction grew from work with homeless shelters and sustainable building in Colorado. - Although he once planned to become an Episcopalian priest, he chose to pursue housing affordability, dignity, beauty, and comfort as his life’s mission. - A master’s degree in space resources also shaped his interest in using robots for construction in extreme environments. ## Why Icon Focused on 3D-Printed Walls - Icon believed advanced software and robotics could improve construction. - The company targeted walls because they are among the slowest, most complex, and labor- and material-intensive parts of building. - Its system extrudes layers of cement-based material reinforced with steel rods. - The printed wall replaces much of conventional construction, including framing, insulation, drywall, sheathing, finishes, and siding. ## Claimed Benefits of 3D-Printed Homes - Faster and potentially more affordable construction. - Walls rated to withstand fires for two hours and 57 minutes and winds up to 250 miles per hour. - Some residents in Icon’s 3D-printed neighborhood reportedly pay as little as $17 per month in energy costs. - Icon says its homes have performed strongly in testing for compressive strength, bending, energy efficiency, fire, flooding, hurricanes, and termites. - Ballard also emphasizes that the homes can be aesthetically appealing, not merely functional. - He predicts that conventional stick-frame construction could eventually become obsolete or even prohibited. ## Vitruvius and AI-Driven Architecture - Icon had long worked on automating architectural tasks but struggled with the complexity and computational demands involved. - Building projects must account for budgets, schedules, designs, and highly localized permitting requirements. - Building codes vary across thousands of jurisdictions, making them difficult to interpret and apply. - Icon began pursuing generative AI training roughly two years before the interview. - The company collected floor plans, building designs, permits, and related documents to create what Ballard describes as the world’s largest architectural dataset. - Vitruvius is intended to produce architectural designs and construction plans, then translate them into instructions for Icon’s robots. ## Construction on Earth and Beyond - Icon’s broader ambition is to use autonomous construction systems in challenging environments. - The company is collaborating with NASA on potential infrastructure for the Moon. - Ballard presents lunar construction as an extension of the same incremental process used to improve housing on Earth. Icon’s approach combines automated design with robotic construction rather than treating AI as a standalone design tool. If its performance and cost claims continue to hold up in real-world projects, the technology could offer a promising alternative to traditional construction, particularly where labor, materials, or access are limited.

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Robotics AI Generative AI Automation+4