Foundations
Start here. This chapter defines physical AI, separates it from generative AI and from classical robotics, and lays out the stack — sensing, models, control, hardware, safety — that the rest of the handbook takes apart piece by piece.
§Articles in this chapter
1 articleWhat is physical AI? A working definition
Physical AI is AI that perceives the real world and acts on it through a machine body. What the term covers, how the stack works, and why it is hard.
§Terms from this chapter
Full glossary →Embodied AI
AI that learns and acts through a body situated in an environment. The older, research-oriented name for what industry now mostly calls physical AI.
Physical AI
AI systems that perceive the physical world, decide what to do, and act on it through a machine body such as a robot arm, a mobile robot, a humanoid or a vehicle.