Where energy, GeoAI and robotics converge

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Interview with Steve Ray

Every great city has a pattern. That pattern is layered and repeated. Where the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers converge, another system converges as well: Energy, Information, and Machines. It has been that way for two hundred years. Geography and infrastructure merge.

This convergence explains everything about why Pittsburgh competes at the level of much larger cities in the race to master robotics and geospatial artificial intelligence.

Energy

Then: Coal fired the furnaces. Steam drove the engines. Power turned mills and moved locomotives.

Now: Splitting atoms spins the turbines. Energy courses through grids giving life to cities and systems.

Information

Then: A dispatcher taps a telegraph key. Dots and dashes pass through wires. A train operator reads the decoded message and acts. Distance disappears one message at a time.

Now: The dots and dashes are 1s and 0s and satellites and fiber optics are the wires. Data is spatially intelligent in real-time and self-organizing. The world is digital as much as it is physical.

Machines

Then: Bessemer steel was the breakthrough: faster, stronger, and could scale. Locomotives moved across America, controlled by man and coordinated by telegraph.

Now: Advanced materials are the breakthrough. Autonomous machines can walk, fly, float, and drive. They navigate three-dimensional space in real-time operating independently.

Now is then. The pattern is identical. Three domains working as one integrated whole. Energy is generated. Information is transferred. A machine moves. The three domains are not separate. They are one.

The Origin of Pittsburgh’s Advantage

“We have a history of figuring out how to make things here and how to finance things and how to power things here.”

~ Steve Ray

The information age began in 1844. Samuel Morse sent the first telegraph message from Washington to Baltimore. Within two years, Pittsburgh was the westernmost telegraph office in America. It made Pittsburgh a critical node in the world’s first networked communications system connecting the east to the west.

Young Andrew Carnegie was part of it. He became a messenger boy in 1849 delivering telegraphs by hand. By 1851, Carnegie advanced to telegraph operator becoming the person to code and decode messages, enabling him to know the raw information that he was previously delivering and coordinating the movement of passengers, coal and materials by rail. This knowledge elevated his understanding of systems and the importance of communication as the binding layer between them. He recognized what most people did not. Logistics, communication, and railroads had to work as one coordinated system.

In 1875, Carnegie introduced Bessemer Steel to the United States and settled his operations in Pittsburgh. The choice was deliberate: coal for energy, telegraph infrastructure for communication, and rail manufacturing for machines. Three systems in one location.

By 1900, proof was undeniable: among 669 steel companies in America, Carnegie Steel produced a quarter of the nation’s output, making Carnegie one of the world’s wealthiest men at the time. With his wealth he created Carnegie Tech that would institutionally encode systems thinking into Pittsburgh’s DNA ensuring that future generations would understand energy, information, and machines must work together.

In 1967, the Mellon Institute merged with Carnegie Tech to become Carnegie Mellon University. The Mellon family were bankers, but more like early venture capitalists. With their wealth they established a technical institute focused on specific industries and using their wealth and connections funded research and development.  It was Paul Mellon who helped direct the merger between the two institutions. This is the same Paul Mellon who acquired the Vinlanda Insula (The Vinland map) in 1958. It was believed to be the first map showing the shores of the North American continent to the southwest of Greenland linking Leif Erikson’s voyage in the first millennium to the discovery of the New World. Paul Mellon’s acquisition of the Vinland map was not mere collecting. It signaled institutional priority: geography mattered.

Both Carnegie and Mellon were problem-solvers. Integrating systems was their genius. That genius lives on in their trusts providing sources of funding to continue the method of system integration as core to new technologies.

From Railroads to Robots

“Robots that are designed and built here are for safety in the workplace. They’re for handling the dirty, really tough jobs of cleaning up steel mills and power plants…, or they’re about the autonomy that goes into an autonomous vehicle or an autonomous truck.”

~ Steve Ray

Beginning in the late 1980’s, researchers at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh began investing in spatial intelligence. They realized it was foundational to autonomous machines operating in real-world space. They need geospatial AI.

The power of integrating these systems is best shown through the numbers:

Pittsburgh is home to more than 130 robotics organizations and 268 deep-tech companies across robotics, AI, and related sectors, employing 11,354 people and generating $9.76 billion in funding over seven years. This is not coincidence. Pittsburgh is a robotics hub not because of venture capital alone, or university rankings alone. Pittsburgh is a robotics hub because the city has spent two hundred years proving that it knows how to build systems where energy, information, and machines work as one integrated whole.

When the world needed this capability, Pittsburgh already had it. The infrastructure was in place. The institutions were in place. The collective memory was embedded in the city’s DNA.

But the real story is not the robots themselves. It is how they exist within an integrated system where academia seeds startups, where mature companies provide manufacturing and materials, where energy systems enable extended operation, and where each layer strengthens the others. It is a Circulus Virtuosus, a virtuous cycle.

You can picture board meetings where highly engaged employees from several different companies come together along with city officials to be a part of the larger structure. They are focused on solving problems for each other, for their clients, and for the constituents of the city. Academia attends these meetings offering research and development opportunities. Innovation thrives. Investment is rewarded. Growth is the outcome, and smaller companies and start-ups develop and mature in this environment.

CMU spins out companies; those companies return to CMU for research validation and talent recruitment. Materials companies develop advanced composites and polymers specifically for autonomous systems. Mature industrial firms provide components that startups integrate into their platforms. Energy providers work with roboticists on grid modernization and long-life battery systems.

Astrobotic emerged from CMU’s robotics program and now designs autonomous lunar landers for space missions, and quite possibly on the upcoming Artemis mission in 2027.  The testing being done is on extended geospatial awareness and long-life power systems. Aurora Innovation develops self-driving trucks that are already operating on highways. They integrate real-time geospatial data with energy management to navigate autonomously. Carnegie Robotics builds ruggedized sensors and perception systems born from academic research and deployed in industrial environments.

At the city scale, PGH Labs creates a direct feedback loop. For example, the startup Aquatonomy, a spinoff from Pitt and CMU, maps underwater objects and bathymetry with drones. They are testing their technology at Pittsburgh. They are preparing it for production at scale. CMU’s new Robotics Innovation Center opened this year and it provides dual-use drone testing facilities for air and underwater systems.

Physical AI

“You take that energy, plus the advances in AI and robotics, plus the geospatial capability, and it all comes together in what we like to refer to as physical AI. It’s AI powering physical tools, helping us navigate the physical space.”

~ Steve Ray

The energy that Steve Ray is referring to is Westinghouse Electric’s work developing microreactors and nuclear systems and Eos Energy’s work to extend the operational duration of robots with long-lasting fuel cells. Both companies are in Pittsburgh.

Covestro supplies high-performance polymers for advanced materials to build robots and sensors. PPG provides advanced composites and coatings. These materials make machines lighter, stronger, and more capable.

Eaton manages power electronics and industrial control systems. Wabtec develops machine vision and autonomy subsystems. ANSYS simulates robot performance under real-world conditions before hardware is built.

This is not a collection of companies. It is a functioning industrial ecosystem where each layer depends on the others, where feedback is immediate, where proximity matters.

Pittsburgh is Rare

“It’s rare to have four R1 research institutions in such a close proximity. CMU and Pitt, plus Penn State and WVU in the region. That gives us a real opportunity to have complementary strengths in different ways.”

~ Steve Ray

Most cities have one or two nodes working together. Pittsburgh has all three: Energy, Information/GeoAI, and Machines. Plus, it has academic support for R&D and the institutional patronage of Carnegie Mellon and others.

Pittsburgh recently held its annual GeoAI & Robotics Summit. The focus was geo-enabled autonomy among other topics, with speakers emphasizing that robots cannot scale without geospatial intelligence. Pittsburgh is aiming to become a test bed and model for how GeoAI and robotics integrate at city scale.

The bulk of the work has already been done. The technological bottleneck has shifted from research to deployment. The constraint is now capital, standards, and regulatory alignment. It is time for investment, regulations, and legislation. This is the inflection point. Pittsburgh is positioned to lead.

Technology changes. Principles do not. This is why Pittsburgh is able to compete globally at the level of much larger cities. The city’s advantage is embedded in its geography, its history, its operational mindset of coordination and cooperation, and its institutional support. Pittsburgh is quietly building the future. Next is now.