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Last year techUK's Future Visions series explored physical AI as a next-generation technology with cutting-edge uses in robotics, smart machines, and human-machine collaboration. This year, our AI and Data programme will dig deeper into how physical AI is evolving and what it could mean for the UK's AI sector. 

Physical AI refers to AI systems designed to perceive, understand, reason and act within the physical world. It includes hardware and software that support situational awareness, planning and adaptive action in real-world environments. This can cover AI integrated into physical infrastructure and machines, combining sensory, perceptual, and reasoning capabilities to support intelligent decision-making and action, as well as approaches such as world modelling that allow AI systems to learn, predict, and simulate real world phenomena. Advances in world modelling approaches and simulation technologies have accelerated the development of physical AI applications by enabling models to learn from virtual representations of physical environments before deployment. These approaches are helping reduce development cost, improve safety validation, and accelerate time to deployment.  

Physical AI represents a significant potential opportunity for the UK economy. As applications expand across sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and infrastructure, important questions remain about where the UK’s strengths lie and what is needed to support responsible adoption. 

To shape a strong industry-led position on how to seize the potential of physical AI, techUK's AI and Data programme will be running a three-part workshop series for members. The series will look at physical AI in more detail to get industry's view on just how ready the UK is for physical AI applications. 

What the workshop series will explore