Physical AI · Autonomous Systems

Building Trust in Physical AI

Impressive Physical AI prototypes routinely take far longer to deploy than anyone expects, including teams that know better. The gap is one of trust, and the work of building that trust (technical, organizational, and regulatory) is consistently underestimated. I bring the strategic discernment and technical rigor, honed over years inside high-stakes autonomy programs, to close the gap between high-capability demos and credible, at-scale deployment.

What I Do

Product Strategy

Aligning high-integrity offerings with market demand.

Across the Physical AI value chain, development is so focused on solving the hard technical problems that the market questions get deferred until it is expensive to change course: what to build, for whom, and why now.

Success in Physical AI requires more than just safety; it requires a product that the market finds compelling. I help developers and suppliers across the value chain — from Tier 2s to OEMs — define what to build to maximize their competitiveness and desirability to the tiers above them. By leveraging inside-track insight into OEM requirements and the evolving regulatory landscape, I de-risk your roadmap and identify the technical capabilities that transform your value proposition into a formidable market advantage. I help you balance technical innovation with market-driven expansion, ensuring your investments unlock latent demand and create an urgent need for your offerings.

Organizational Architecture

Building the machine that builds the machine.

The hardest safety problems I have encountered were not purely technical. They were also organizational: fragmented ownership, misaligned incentives, and a culture where safety gradually became more proclamation than practice.

A safe system is the output of a high-integrity organization with a deliberate safety culture and effective processes. I help you design (or heal) the engineering environment, communication loops, and development workflows required for complex, safety-critical Physical AI. My methods naturally incentivize against compliance theater and safety by proclamation, establishing the organizational discipline and safety-conscious leadership needed to exercise sound judgment for at-scale deployments. By aligning the human and technical systems, I enable your organization to repeatedly deliver high-integrity products and stand confidently behind its safety claims.

III

Systems Architecture & Safety Cases

Bridging the gap between high-capability AI and high-integrity deployment.

Most teams are good at building the raw capabilities of a system. Building the Safety Case that makes those capabilities deployable at scale is where programs find themselves perpetually months away from deployment.

I engineer the Safety DNA and integrity layers required to deploy high-capability AI in the real world. Since building a plausibly safe system is only half the story, I help your teams craft the technical evidence and argumentation needed to evolve prototypes into deployable products. This ensures that at-scale deployment is backed by a credible safety narrative.

Strategic V&V (Elastic Rigor)

Embedding a scalable validation gradient into the development lifecycle.

Most programs treat V&V as a phase that comes after development, a gate to pass rather than a discipline to embed. By the time it matters most, validation is too shallow to surface the issues that accumulated along the way, and too rushed to fix them.

I help you achieve Continuous Safety and Continuous Validation (CS/CV) by architecting the strategies, toolchains, and infrastructure needed to evolve V&V from early development to at-scale deployment. I apply the principles of Elastic Rigor — a methodology forged through years of leading high-stakes autonomy programs — to create a maturation roadmap that aligns technical and process rigor with development stages and use cases. Safety is not a 500-page document on Day 1, nor does a warehouse robot need the documentation of a Boeing 747. The result is optimal development velocity, backed by absolute integrity.

About

The gap between an impressive Physical AI prototype and a credible, deployable product is real and wide. It humbles even the most ambitious teams. I have navigated this gap throughout my career and I help engineering organizations close it.

I have invested twenty years into building autonomous systems across the full arc of the industry. I headed the autonomy architecture, integration, safety, and initial vehicle builds at Zoox. At Toyota Research Institute, I created and led the Systems and Safety Engineering teams, building the safety case that enabled public-road autonomous driving and led the development of the next-generation technology platform. I subsequently led Systems Engineering, Safety Engineering, and Validation at Aurora; following Aurora’s acquisition of Uber ATG, I ensured the combined organization outperformed the sum of its previous parts. My work with European OEMs including Volvo and Scania provided a complementary perspective, showing me where institutionalized safety discipline must be reinvented from first principles to remain agile and competitive in the age of AI, without discarding lessons that newer entrants often learn the hard way.

The technical problems in Physical AI are genuinely hard, but the organizational problems are harder, and ultimately more decisive. You can bend technology to your will through engineering discipline and iteration. Smart, highly opinionated people are less accommodating. I have seen how friction accumulates when autonomy development, systems engineering, safety engineering, and regulatory teams operate from conflicting formative beliefs, incentives, and priorities. Resolving this friction is not a people management problem; it is an organizational and process design challenge. I help build organizational structures and workflows with the same thought and rigor as the technology development itself.

I limit my consulting to just a few clients at a time, focusing on the safety architecture, V&V strategy, organizational disciplines, and product strategy required to make high-capability AI safe for the real world. My goal is to help you close the gap between an impressive prototype and something you can stake your reputation on deploying at scale. Beyond expertise, I bring relationships built over two decades with the leaders and organizations shaping this field. I don’t just help you solve the immediate problem; I arm your organization with the capability and culture to keep it solved.

How I Work

I work on retainer, giving clients ongoing access to my thinking and judgment rather than a transactional exchange of hours for deliverables. Engagements range from periodic strategic counsel to deeper involvement in product strategy, safety architecture, V&V strategy, and organizational design.

I am based in India, bringing a perspective shaped by a decade in Silicon Valley and a decade before that in Stockholm. I work remotely and travel as needed.

I work with a small number of clients at any given time, taking on engagements where I am confident my involvement will make a material difference.

Get in Touch

If you are working on Physical AI or the technologies and infrastructure that enable it, and believe there is a conversation worth having, I would like to hear from you.

sagar@sagarbehere.com