JOSHUA JOSEPH WAS WORKING AS A manufacturing process engineer at Tesla when autonomous mobile robots rolled onto his production line.
Tesla began piloting autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for material movement automation inside its factories, and Joseph’s line was selected for the test. When the pilot succeeded, a new opportunity was presented to him: Becoming Tesla's first AMR deployment engineer.
“No one’s ever done it. I didn’t know if I was going to succeed or fail, but yeah, I took it up,” Joseph said.
Stepping into new territory while the playbook is still being written is exciting, he said. It offered him the chance to learn from teams inside Tesla, connect with other experts in the industry, and help bring about a scalable automation effort. “It’s not just building from scratch but also fixing things to make the next phase successful,” he said. “Something might not be a problem for the current system but can become a bottleneck in the future.”
From Joseph’s perspective, the most interesting part of engineering is the challenge of incrementally pushing boundaries. “I learned a lot about smart factories and how Industry 5.0 will work [in university]. That was the turning point where I decided, okay, I’m going to get specialized in automation. I found my niche,” he said.
From Humble Beginnings to AI Visions
Engineering was in Joseph’s life long before university. His father was a mechanical engineer, so the idea of following a similar path felt almost ingrained. “Ever since I was a small kid, it was always like, oh, Josh, you need to become a mechanical engineer too,” he said. “It’s like embedded in me.”
He was first introduced to robotics and automation after moving from India to the U.S. for his master’s degree at Northeastern University. It was there that he joined an Industry 4.0 lab where he learned about smart factories, cyber-physical systems, advanced manufacturing, and how Industry 5.0 will work.
Ever looking toward the future, his attention is now on the next big thing: physical AI.
“Automation is moving towards AI and specifically physical AI,” Joseph said. “Within the next five years, physical AI is going to be the big hot topic for every engineering field. It’s not just software, it’s going to be for mechanical engineering, electrical, and industrial engineering.”
“People think AI right now is all about software engineering, but physical AI is all about mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. If engineering societies start getting the word out about this, I think that would transform many careers in the next five years.”
—Joshua Joseph, Manufacturing Engineer, Tesla, Inc.
Joseph describes current AI as largely digital: models analyze data, respond to prompts, and make decisions through software. Physical AI brings those capabilities into machines that move through and interact with the real world.
“So, when AI gets into matter and into atoms, that’s physical AI for you,” Joseph said, defining it in simple terms. “Right now, we are in the generative AI phase, and we’re going to the agentic AI phase. Physical AI is going to be robots, collaborative robots, humanoid robots, and mobile robots like the ones I handle.”
Joseph is currently developing a framework for human-AMR interaction. Cobots and humans have already been studied extensively, and humanoids are now receiving attention. But mobile robots have not been looked at in quite the same way, he said, especially around how humans and AMRs can collaborate in a shared workspace.
“What I’m proposing in the framework I’m working upon is that the system throws out the task and it can be either the human picking it up or the robot picking it up,” Joseph said. The decision matrix might consider fatigue, availability, timing, or other factors. A tired worker could let the robot take the task, while an energized worker might choose to do it.
Setting His Own Standards
A big believer in giving back, Joseph has a number of projects going on outside of his full-time job.
Working in standards is one of them. Joseph is one of the youngest members on the American National Standards Institute and Robotic Industries Association’s Industrial Robot Safety Standards Committee. “I’m really happy to be a part of it,” he said. The insights have shown him how much discussion, voting, and refinement goes into standards that companies and countries may eventually rely on. It’s another way to help shape the field as well.
He’s also building the Brownfield AMR Readiness Assessment Framework, meant to help small and mid-sized factories understand whether they are ready to adopt mobile robots. “I think that will be the most exciting contribution of mine for the next couple years,” he said. There’s a major gap for small and medium-sized facilities that want to automate but do not know where to start, he explained. The online tool would allow companies to plug in values about their factory and assess whether they are ready for AMRs.
And if that wasn’t enough on his plate, Joseph has built a LinkedIn community where he mentors students and early-career engineers. “LinkedIn is my tool to give back,” he said. “I see students, you know, really talented students, they want to come up in their careers.”
When students he has mentored land jobs and ask how they can return the favor, Joseph tells them to pass it on. “Just go out and help someone else who is a student or someone who’s struggling to get a job," he said. “I’ve always had this notion of giving back to the community. That’s kind of my ethic.”
Sarah Alburakeh is strategic content editor.
Joseph plays guitar almost every day. He used to perform in bands and play at church, but now he plays mostly for himself as a way to relax. He also goes on hikes to reset from what he calls “the chaos of automation and robotics.”
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