My conversation with Prof. Dr. Majid Khadiv, Head of the ATARI LAB (Applied and Theoretical Aspects of Robot Intelligence) and Assistant Professor at TUM (the Technical University of Munich).

The ATARI Lab focuses on AI planning in dynamic environments, bridging optimal control with modern foundation models to make general-purpose humanoid robots safe, adaptable, and truly autonomous.

ATARI Lab: https://ce.cit.tum.de/en/aipd/

Majid on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/majid-khadiv-a92a2a62/

Ilir on X: https://x.com/IlirAliu_

Ilir on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilir-aliu/

Timestamps:

0:00 Building national humanoids in Iran without resources

2:11 Why playing soccer beats being a tech kid

3:03 How my sister proved you can break through the entrance exam

5:10 Thinking deeply about a single math problem for five hours

7:02 Visualizing physics: Why Newtonian mechanics just clicked

8:38 Why traditional schooling fails curious minds

10:50 Should AI tutors replace the classroom experience?

18:48 Discovering the intersection of control and dynamics in robotics

20:30 Building the Surena III humanoid from scratch with PhD students

23:44 Honda's Asimo vs our 98kg robot: The engineering reality

26:01 How the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge humbled everyone

28:55 Why grades don't reflect true deep-thinking ability

34:01 How Ludovic Righetti transformed my research mindset at Max Planck

37:09 The price to pay for staying at the forefront of academia

52:19 Why general purpose humanoids are the holy grail

58:26 The hand is the pinnacle of human intelligence

62:03 Fusing language models with evolutionary search for physics planning

64:27 Why safety and OOD cases will keep humanoids out of homes for years

70:19 Advice to my younger self: Have confidence in your curiosity