David Watkins
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davidjwatkins.bsky.social
David Watkins
@davidjwatkins.bsky.social
Was called a polymath once. I work on robotics and cognitive intelligence. Opinions are my own.
Your toilet works because of a $3.8 billion engineering marvel you've never thought about. @stefie10.bsky.social and I toured Deer Island, where 360 million gallons of wastewater are processed daily, egg-shaped digesters taller than a 10-story building, and workers still inspect tanks by hand.
The Deer Island Marvel
Wastewater treatment and engineering excellence
whattotelltherobot.com
December 5, 2025 at 12:19 PM
Reposted by David Watkins
Intelligence is a multi-faceted concept, and embodiment is an important facet! whattotelltherobot.com/p/the-ground...
September 2, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Just published: “From Physics to Embodied Intelligence” - why robots are finally getting interesting with @stefie10.bsky.social
Have a read here:
whattotelltherobot.com/p/from-physics-to-embodied-intelligence
From Physics to Embodied Intelligence
How Robots Are Finally Getting Interesting
whattotelltherobot.com
August 27, 2025 at 1:39 AM
Stefanie Tellex and I wrote a book chapter for George Konidaris' forthcoming book, Designing an Intelligence. It's a recapitulation of Rod's old paper, "Elephants Don't Play Chess" for the age of LLMs.
whattotelltherobot.com/p/what-to-te...
What to Tell the Robot
Robots, Space, and Time
whattotelltherobot.com
August 12, 2025 at 7:49 PM
ChatGPT cannot handle generating paint by numbers
June 14, 2025 at 4:04 PM
I was featured on Dr. Waku's channel about the future of robotics. Really excited how this interview turned out!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=89P2.... Thank you @drwaku.bsky.social for having me on.
Will robots explode in capabilities like LLMs did?
YouTube video by Dr Waku
www.youtube.com
January 10, 2025 at 5:11 AM
The Google links changed color? Is this design helpful?
December 27, 2024 at 2:36 PM
For those of you who own US businesses, don't forget to fill out your BOIR by January 1. It's a new requirement for all companies in the US that comes with potentially high fines. boiefiling.fincen.gov/fileboir
BOI E-FILING
boiefiling.fincen.gov
December 25, 2024 at 3:40 PM
This report on a plan for Li-ion independence in the US from 2023 is a good read. www.resilinc.com/blog/li-brid... Clearly a lot we need to do as a country to build this infrastructure.
Can the US Produce Lithium-Ion Batteries Domestically? Li-Bridge Outlines a Plan
Li-Bridge released 5 broad objectives to accelerate a sustainable domestic lithium battery supply chain in North America. Is it feasible?
www.resilinc.com
December 22, 2024 at 2:03 PM
Apparently four year olds think that Black Friday is a holiday. They would be correct.
December 21, 2024 at 9:18 PM
Reposted by David Watkins
My pet peeve is shallow invocations of neuroscience to justify a heuristic ML algorithm
December 16, 2024 at 8:06 AM
What a clever way to handle authorship conflicts. Fighting over contributions should not get in the way of doing great scientific work. I doubt this will fundamentally fix the problem, however I am happy the authors are starting a conversation. arxiv.org/abs/2304.01393
Every Author as First Author
We propose a new standard for writing author names on papers and in bibliographies, which places every author as a first author -- superimposed. This approach enables authors to write papers as true e...
arxiv.org
December 16, 2024 at 4:12 PM
apnews.com/article/supr...

We are likely to see more of this as courts are forced to deal with more nuanced and complex AI issues. Researchers can do more to help inform legal experts about details related to these types of cases. Our highest court should be able to rule on these cases.
Supreme Court allows investors' class action to proceed against microchip company Nvidia
The Supreme Court is allowing a class-action lawsuit that accuses Nvidia of misleading investors about its past dependence on selling computer chips for the mining of volatile cryptocurrency to procee...
apnews.com
December 15, 2024 at 4:12 PM
Tried out a Sony 200mm-600mm + 2x Telephoto with my A7RV. Got decent results but room for improvement. Ended up taking some photos with my Tamron 28-200mm instead.
December 15, 2024 at 5:28 AM
www.reddit.com/r/adventofco... This is incredibly disheartening. Such a cool project should not be abused like this for internet points.
From the adventofcode community on Reddit: Discussion on LLM Cheaters
Explore this post and more from the adventofcode community
www.reddit.com
December 14, 2024 at 9:03 PM
I had the privilege of judging the Columbia Hack & Build Hackathon. Blown away by these teams! 🚀

Standouts:
🤖 Tilting maze with IMU
✍️ Voice-to-Braille app
👁️ Human-tracking robotic eye

Projects: www.columbiarobotics.club/hack-and-bui...

Huge thanks to CURC. The future of robotics is at Columbia! 🌟
Teams - Hack & Build 2024 - Columbia University Robotics Club
Teams having participated in this year's Hack and Build
www.columbiarobotics.club
December 3, 2024 at 4:02 AM
Excited to share our latest work presented at #CoRL2024: Theia, a vision foundation model that distills multiple VFMs to enhance robot learning. Theia achieves state-of-the-art performance with reduced training data and computational resources. Explore our paper here: theaiinstitute.com/news/theia
Distilling diverse vision foundation models to improve robot learning — The AI Institute
Introducing Theia, a vision foundation model for robotics developed by researchers at The AI Institute. By using multiple off-the-shelf vision foundation models as a basis, Theia generates rich visual...
theaiinstitute.com
November 19, 2024 at 10:20 PM