“I couldn’t let it go”
The story starts in Shenzhen, where Geert Eijkhout and Cláudio Silva joined an NL Robotics trade mission earlier this year. “You walk through an entire ecosystem built around Physical AI”, Geert says. “Factories full of robots, labs training humanoids on real tasks, startups that didn’t exist two years ago now shipping products. All within a few kilometers of each other.” He came home enthusiastic, “and honestly also a little worried that Europe is far behind.”
Visits to the AI Summit in Paris and NVIDIA GTC in Berlin confirmed it. “Paris showed that Europe is still far from execution. Berlin showed that the technology stack is maturing. The window to learn this is now, not in three years.”
Physical AI is the next step after generative AI, Geert explains:
“AI no longer lives only on a screen. It perceives the world through cameras and sensors and acts in it through a robot. Instead of an engineer spending two days programming a task, you show the robot and tell it in plain language what to do.”
Geert wrote the business case: what it would take, what it would cost, and what it would cost if ICT Group did not act. Customers were already asking what robots could do on their floor, EU subsidies co-fund part of the learning curve, and university collaborations were under way. The Board backed it.
“We did not buy these robots to sell robots, we bought them to build skills: programming a humanoid, training it, simulating it in a digital twin and integrating it safely with people. Those are systems questions, and that is what ICT Group has done for decades.”
The lab in Portugal: real versus marketing
Cláudio Silva has seen plenty of dancing robot demos.
“We need to separate what is real from what is marketing. The only way to do that is to put your hands on the real thing.”
That is what the new Physical AI lab in Portugal is for. The team has selected a concrete use case, still confidential, and is teaching the robot to perform it. It is anything but plug and play. Training requires huge amounts of data, and recording it physically means someone repeating the same movement over and over. So the team is building a digital twin of the lab, where a virtual robot generates training data. “We train in simulation and validate in the real world,” Cláudio says. “It is not simple, but we are learning a lot. That’s what matters.”
Knowledge for the whole group
The skills are developed in Portugal but shared across ICT Group through the Centre of Innovation. “We can even control the robot in Woerden remotely from Portugal, and vice versa,” says Geert.
The NVIDIA partnership is central. ICT Group is an NVIDIA solution partner, and the team works daily with NVIDIA’s robotics stack, like Isaac GR00T open foundation model for humanoid robots (VLA) and the Jetson computer that acts as the robot’s brain. “Our partnership has to grow from a logo into real engineering capability,” Geert says. He points to a striking chain: ASML builds the machines that make the chips, the chips power AI, and AI now goes into robots. “ICT Group is present at both ends of that chain.”
In Portugal, the project is also building bridges to academia, including the Institute for Systems and Robotics in Lisbon and research institutes around Porto, with master’s theses, joint projects, and European funding proposals in the pipeline. Cláudio adds:
“It brings their knowledge into the company, and puts us in touch with the engineers of the future early on.”
Built for people, but not where people should be
Where will humanoids make a difference first? Geert names logistics and manufacturing: repetitive tasks and heavy handling. Maintenance inside wind turbines is another example.
Cláudio adds a European angle. “The first use cases will be places built for people, but where we don’t want people to be.” Think of dark, damp spaces, or asbestos removal, still common in older Portuguese buildings. “It is not a factory you design around a robot. It is an existing environment made for humans, so a humanoid fits.”
Demographics add urgency, as Europe’s workforce is shrinking. “If we want to keep our welfare society, robots will need to fill part of that gap,” says Geert. He expects the question to become routine.
“Within one or two years, customers will ask: can your robot do this task in my factory? By then we will have a team that has already done it, on real hardware.”
Better on board than off board
The technology is moving exponentially but Cláudio keeps it realistic. “You don’t need to believe every job will be done by a robot. But these technologies will have a real impact. The question is not if, but how big. It is better to be on board than off board.” Geert adds.
"If you start in two years’ time, you will be too late. The window to learn this is now and ICT Group has chosen to be there."
