How Do Humans and Robots Share Space? — with Rainer Sternfeld & Ludvig Erikson Brangstrup
Every warehouse aisle, hospital corridor, or airport terminal was designed for human bodies and human judgment, not for machines that see, decide, and act on their own. This panel brings together builders deploying Physical AI across automotive, warehousing, manufacturing, and public spaces to discuss the real design decisions that let humans and robots share a workspace safely.
2026 is the year physical AI moves from pilot demos into everyday shared space: warehouses, factories, hospitals, even public restrooms, built for human bodies, not sensors and actuators.The founders making that transition possible are deciding, right now, how a robot signals intent, negotiates a blind corner, or hands off to a human when its model breaks down.
Those are safety decisions, made inside product teams, not compliance offices. Robotics, AI, and industrial leaders need visibility into how those calls actually get made, before the patterns are locked in and retrofitting becomes the only option.
The sharpest tension is whether to adapt the robot to the world, or adapt the world to the robot. Most companies still choose the second path: geofenced zones, robot lanes, controlled pilot sites, because it is easier to engineer and easier to sell as safe. That does not scale to where physical AI is actually needed: hospitals, sidewalks, public restrooms, mixed factory floors full of untrained people. Building for the unmodified environment instead means confronting a harder, unresolved debate: how much interpretive judgment a robot should be trusted to make on its own in an ambiguous moment, how much should stay with a human, and who is accountable when that line is drawn wrong.
Speakers:
Rainer Sternfeld — General Partner, NordicNinja.
Ludvig Erikson Brangstrup — Co-Founder, Qualia Studios.