Jeff Burnstein: Robotics Imperative, Standards, National Strategy | Turn the Lens Ep49

Jeff Burnstein: Robotics Imperative, Standards, National Strategy | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick Ep49
English Transcript
© Copyright 2026 Menlo Creek Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved

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Intro

Cold Open

Waymo (System Voice):
This experience may feel futuristic, but the need to buckle up is the same as always. Relax, and thank you for riding with us.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Hey, Jeff Frick here. Coming to you from the back of a Waymo.

In collaboration with Humanoids Summit and ALM Ventures, we’re co-releasing all the interviews from Humanoids Summit on Turn the Lens, and I’m really excited about that.

And this next interview is a great one. It’s with Jeff Burnstein. He is the president of the Association for Advancing Automation.

Jeff’s got great perspective because he’s been in the business for over 40 years. He’s lived through a number of these evolutions and revolutions. And so we can look back at the experience to see what worked, what didn’t work, what can we learn.

And one of the things he talked about is really cultural acceptance of automation. And specifically looking back at the last industrial robot revolution in manufacturing, the fact that Japan was first to adopt it and embraced it before the US did, and really got a good leadership position at that point in time.

He’s also quick to point out that today China is in the lead position, and China has a national policy, a national strategy on robotics.

And Jeff is pretty convinced and will be spending a lot of time in 2026 probably working on getting a national policy for the United States for robotics and automation, because if it’s the industry of the future, it needs the support at that level.

The other thing that Jeff talked about is standards, which is why I wanted to film this from the back of a Waymo. You’ve got to have standards in place.

For businesses to be able to have insurance and all the other little logistics and regulatory boxes that you have to check to actually go into business and to scale.

Clearly, Waymo has got that figured out in terms of what is the liability and the responsibility if there is an accident between the software, the hardware, the operator, et cetera, et cetera.

So standards are a big piece of getting to widespread adoption. And also it’s pretty consistently found that if you adopt the standard and you follow the standard, you know your business liability and your potential for problems is significantly reduced.

Great conversation with Jeff Burnstein. Hope you enjoy it. I’m sure you will.

Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening on the podcast. See you next time. Take care. Bye-bye.

Main Interview 

Cold Open
Yeah, I think we’re ready.
In 5, 4, 3…

Main Interview

Jeff Frick (Host):
Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here, coming to you from the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, for the Humanoid Summit 2025.

We were here a year ago for the inaugural event. They had a summer event in London earlier this year, and it sounds like they’re going to have a summer event in Japan next summer.

So the momentum is crazy around here. I thought it was crazy last year, but there’s a whole bunch of new companies here today, many of which are only a couple of years old.

So the pace of change is really clipping along.

So it’s great to have somebody with a little bit of a historical perspective to give us some relative framework for what’s really happening today.

We’re excited to have our next guest. He’s Jeff Burnstein, the president of the Association for Advancing Automation.

Jeff, great to see you.

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
Thanks for having me. I mean, is there any more advancing automation than what we’re seeing going on right here over the last couple days? Well, certainly we’re moving forward in humanoids. Well, certainly we’re moving forward in humanoids.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Before we turned on the cameras, you said you’ve been at this for a little while. And specifically for the industrial robot revolution that hit manufacturing, which now we see anytime you watch any video of any factory, the robots are all over.

So I wonder if you can share some of the lessons that we can learn from that, some of the time frames so people can get adjusted as to what’s real. How long does it really take for new processes to get in? What can we learn from that first kind of round of robot, both success and, as you said, some early failures and some missed expectations?

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
Yeah. You know, the first industrial robot was introduced in 1961.1961, in a GM factory in New Jersey. 

Jeff Frick (Host):
And what did it do? 

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
Oh, it’s some, you know, welding or some, machine tending, material handling, something. 

Jeff Frick (Host):
Okay.

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
But the point is that in the 60s, robot applications were slow to develop in the U.S. Joe Engelberger was the founder. He licensed the technology to Japan. Japan became all in on robotics. They realized they had an aging population or they had issues they wanted to improve. When I grew up, products made in Japan were considered inferior. So they put robots to use. They became the leaders in industrial robot adoption, in part because of a national strategy. 

Fast forward to today. Who has the national strategy on robotics? China. And China has dwarfed everyone in terms of their application. The industrial robot market in the United States has been up and down. We went through a period of tremendous interest in the late 70s and early 80s. It was going to be the next industrial revolution. And it didn’t work out that way.

And people kind of wrote off robotics in the 80s and early 90s. But slowly it developed, and then really started to accelerate after the Great Recession. Coming out of that, between 2010 and 2019, the greatest period of adoption of robotics in U.S. history.

Jeff Frick (Host):
So before that takeoff, do people just punt on putting them in? I mean, clearly they wouldn’t be taking automation out if they put it in, but were they just suspicious and not ready to make the investment, or didn’t see the ROI? What were some of those things during those dark periods?

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
A lot of things had to happen. First of all, the automotive industry was about 80%, 75% of the users of robotics in the early days. We had to reach more and more companies. To do that, it had to be easier to use, had to be more affordable. And it took time. But eventually the industry got there, and it had to develop easy solutions, out-of-the-box solutions. Not everything had to be custom anymore.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Right.

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
So I think we’ve made great progress in the industrial robot industry. Along came collaborative robots. Along came autonomous mobile robots, and those have gotten a foothold. Now the next frontier appears to be potentially humanoids. Now the next frontier appears to be potentially humanoids.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah.

So from a business model perspective, there’s some talk here about, you know, Robots-as-a-Service. And they’re complicated machines, and they’re new machines. And there’s probably not a lot of technical people with the expertise to fix them at the customers. I mean, we just had someone on whose customers are laundry mats. There’s probably not a robot service person at their laundromat. So when you think of kind of robot-as-a-service eventually moving to people buying them and then having, I imagine in a factory, the ecosystem to support the things once they’re deployed, when they break or need tuning or whatever, how do you see that ecosystem developing and how important is that to the adoption of the whole thing?

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
Well, I think before you even get to that, safety is the key. Humanoids at this moment aren’t really safe enough to work around people, whether it’s in a factory, a warehouse, and certainly a home.

We need standards to protect people. We need to make sure that if we’re going to bring a robot into our home, it’s not using the data it collects and sharing that data out. I don’t want people knowing everything I do in my home. I don’t think you do either.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Right, right.

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
So there’s a lot of issues beyond who’s going to service them, but certainly that’s a big deal in a home. I mean, what am I going to do if it breaks? In a factory, they might have the skills necessary to repair something, but, yeah, that’s an issue.

Jeff Frick (Host):
And what about, again, I think it kind of follows onto your safety comment, things, pesky things that you have to have in place to do business, like insurance and all these kind of governance and regulations and safety things. Not necessarily that it doesn’t hurt anybody, but safety in terms of the business and the financial risk. And also for the vendor. How do those things evolve, and how do you see that evolving going forward?

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
Well, those things evolve, and part of it is because there were standards that were developed. Our association developed the first American national robot safety standard in 1986. It became the basis of the International Standards Organization safety standard. So people knew, like, if you were following this standard, you could safeguard robots and you wouldn’t be at as much risk from a business standpoint.

Like if you’re not following the standards, OSHA might come in and shut you down, and you could have all kinds of lawsuits against you. So this standardization is critical. And we’re working on humanoid robot safety standards right now.

When you look at some of these foundational models and all these big models that people are building as components that people can buy to plug in their robot, will the standards, you think, go into the component pieces as well as the finished robot for all those different foundation models?

It’s hard to know on AI. So I’m talking more about the hardware, but the AI part of it, depending on how that’s applied, I think we need standards on AI itself.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Right. And then, like, you know, these world models. I have the model of the gravity, on the way a cup works. 

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
There’s a lot of issues with that. And I’ve seen recent lawsuits from, you know, where did you get the data? How did you make that model? What did you surf on the internet to develop your model? Whose data was it in the first place? So I’ve seen a lot of those issues. There could be legal issues, yeah.

Jeff Frick (Host):
So you had a panel earlier talking about robotics and China. But as you mentioned already, one is that China has a national policy. It’s a strategic importance of the country.

And the other funny thing was one of the other panelists said he was on the Great Wall of China and a robot—yeah—a drone dropped off his Starbucks coffee, which is kind of fascinating.

When you think of, say, Japan, where, you know, you have the vending machine culture, which isn’t necessarily a robot per se, but just the acceptance of technology solutions seems to be a lot more progressive in Japan.

And you even said it was back in the industrial robot days and in China today. Is that a cultural thing? Do we have a hang-up here? What’s the big difference?

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
I think one of the big differences is when we think in the U.S. about robotics, a lot of times people think Terminator. You know, the Hollywood culture has kind of scared people about what a robot is and what it might mean, not only to you personally, but to your job.

So we have that barrier to overcome.

Japan has always had a different view. It’s why that I think adoption happened more quickly in Japan, is that they see robots in their literature and in their culture as friendly.

Now, China is working really hard to build that support among their populace. I just spoke at the World Robot Conference in Beijing in August, and this event had more than 50 humanoid companies exhibiting, and they open it up to the general public.

That way you get little kids in there, they get comfortable seeing robots. They’re fascinated by the technology. Their parents are interested. This builds more acceptance than it does fear.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Right. Comfort. When you think of opportunities and verticals and categories of business, what are some of the ones that maybe are less obvious? We know inside the factory we’ve had a lot of talk about logistics and material handling, a little bit of talk about home health care. Are there interesting segments that you’ve seen, talking to the people that you’ve talked to and the places you go, that maybe are under the radar, that people don’t really see as this great opportunity?

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
Sure. Hospitals. We just had a great presentation on all the different applications of robotics that are potential in the hospital, in the pharmacy, and working with the nurses to do the tasks that the nurses don’t want to do because they want to spend time with the patients.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Right.

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
Even with the patients, there are robots out there that are making the patients more comfortable. So I think there’s a lot of application areas that we haven’t even fully explored yet that go well beyond manufacturing and logistics.

The home, I think we’re a lot further away from. You can envision possibilities of a robot in your home doing tasks that you don’t want to do. Could be cooking, cleaning, but it’s not clear yet that the humanoid form factor is how it’s going to go. It could be general, I mean a specific purpose robot that cooks your dinner and another one that folds your laundry and irons it.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Right.

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
It doesn’t necessarily have to be one robot.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Right. So getting to the end of the year, 2025 is coming to a close. What are some of your priorities? What are you excited about for next year?

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
Well, from an association standpoint, we’ve been spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C., trying to convince the U.S. government that we need a National Robotics Strategy. We looked at the success of Japan, as I mentioned earlier. We looked at the success of China. We look at the fact that there’s probably eight or ten countries right now that have a robotic strategy. The U.S. doesn’t. If this is the industry of the future, automation and robotics, we should have plans, and we should work toward becoming the world leader in all phases of this. Right now, we’re certainly the leader, I believe, in AI, but when it comes to robotics, maybe not so much.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Gotta give them the new vocabulary. Robotics is embedded AI, embodied AI. Then you’re already in. We’re talking embodied AI, right? 

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
We’re talking in that language. And we’re getting close. Seems to work for them. There’s a lot of receptivity.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Yeah. 

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
We’re finding a lot of people understanding this in Washington now, that a national strategy would be useful.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Yeah. Good. Well, I’m sure the adventure and the crazy turns and twists are still yet to come as you keep going through this automated adventure.

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
Yes.

Jeff Frick (Host):
But certainly exciting times ahead.

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
Most exciting time in my four-decade career.

Jeff Frick (Host):
Awesome. Yeah.

Well Jeff, thanks for taking a few minutes. And we look forward to hearing back from you as you get a tour all over the world and see the best stuff out there.

Jeff Burnstein (Guest):
Excellent.

Jeff Frick (Host):
All right. Thank you so much. He’s Jeff, I’m Jeff. We’re at the Computer History Museum. It’s Humanoids Summit 2025. Thanks for watching. We’ll catch you next time.

Cold Close:
Great.
Clear.
Cool.
How’d we do, okay?

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Jeff Burnstein: Robotics Imperative, Standards, National Strategy | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick Ep49

English Transcript

© Copyright 2026 Menlo Creek Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved

‍