The analysis

Analysis

Weekly posts on Physical AI safety. Data-backed. Source-cited.

A specialist publication for the people building, regulating, and capitalising the next decade of Physical AI. Every post starts from a primary source, cites the source, and argues for one thing at a time. No speculation where data exists. No data where speculation would be more honest.

Featured

You have 127 days. Nobody publishes how long this takes.

Regulation2026-09-154 min read

127 days separate 15 September 2026 from 20 January 2027, when Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 will apply. Seven certification bodies were checked for a published duration benchmark and not one publishes it, so what follows is what is documented instead: the first assessor notified on 8 September 2024, roughly twenty-eight months before the Regulation applies, no harmonised standard yet cited under the Regulation, and seven trade associations on record that machinery was the only sector left out of the Omnibus IV transition period.

Read the featured post

Regulation

You have 127 days. Nobody publishes how long this takes.

Sep 15, 2026Read →

Founders

The five hardest questions investors ask deep-tech founders

Why now? Why you? Why won't Big Tech build this? What's the capital efficiency curve? What's the default exit path? The surface question is rarely the real question.

Sep 10, 2026Read →

Engineering

Every robot demo shows what happens when the AI works. Nobody demos what happens when it doesn't.

The test that matters isn't performance. It's failure. What does your robot do when the model crashes mid-motion? If you can't answer that in one sentence — that's the problem.

Sep 9, 2026Read →

Regulation

Is the industry ready for 20 January? Nobody has measured it.

Under five months from a regulation that binds an industry which is 98% SMEs, not one trade association, notified body or consultancy has published a readiness figure. What exists instead is the industry's own request for a delay — and that is more revealing than a survey.

Sep 3, 2026Read →

Engineering

Safety certification — where the time actually goes

Most early-stage teams underestimate certification time by at least 2x. IEC 61508 defines 16 lifecycle phases. Mapped to a project timeline: 12-24 months for SIL 2. SIL 3: add 6-12 months. Phase 6 is where teams are always surprised.

Sep 2, 2026Read →

Engineering

'Safe-by-design' — the four-question test

Four questions that separate serious Physical AI safety engineering from marketing copy. SIL target, redundancy architecture, re-certification plan, fallback behavior. If a vendor can't pass any — save your time.

Aug 27, 2026Read →

Standards

What is 'safe-by-design'?

The most used phrase in Physical AI marketing — and the least defined. Not in IEC 61508. Not in ISO 13849. Four engineering markers that distinguish the real thing from the brochure.

Aug 26, 2026Read →

Regulation

Five months until EU Machinery Regulation 2023/1230 applies

20 January 2027. Cut-off date regulation. No transition period. The old Machinery Directive stops, the new Regulation starts. Every autonomous robot sold in Europe after that date needs to comply.

Aug 19, 2026Read →

Regulation

Four dates. One gap.

Four dates now govern AI safety in European machinery, and three of them moved in the last two weeks. Read them in order and an eighteen-month window appears where autonomous machines are governed by a regulation finalised before the AI provisions were written.

Aug 13, 2026Read →