“AI simultaneously lowers the floor and raises the ceiling” - Satya Nadella
This has been one of the guiding principles for the AI programs we run at the Hub.
In 2025 it lowered the floor to allow non-coders to build apps on their own and raised the ceiling to allow expert software engineers to build entire platforms on their own.
In 2026 it is going to lower the floor to allow people with no background in electronics to build new machines on their own. And it will allow expert builders to create powerful robotic systems on their own.
To help make that happen, we have just stocked up on hardware components like ESP32 microcontrollers, Raspberry Pis, servos etc which we will be using in our Tokenizer AI skills program to support participants in bringing ever more ambitious ideas to life.
We have also acquired a few inexpensive, open source robotic platforms, including an arm, rover and humanoid to experiment and teach with.
AI is a big deal for hardware because builders can use AI coding agents to help them write software for controlling machines. They can also make the machines themselves intelligent by incorporating AI agents into that software.
We put that to the test this week, with Harrison Chapman in residence at the Hub.
We first met Harrison as a grade 10 student in our AI cadetship program where he wowed us with his talent and curiosity. Already then he was a prodigious builder, shipping new inventions every few weeks, like a full 8 bit computer built in Minecraft.
He has since been teaching holiday programs at the Hub and recently won the national robotics championship with his team at Sunshine Coast Grammar.
The project this week was to see whether an AI agent could control a robot. The idea is that you give the agent a natural language instruction and it interprets that instruction and turns it into the code that drives the robot.
It worked, and we will keep poking at this.
The Hub’s Tokenizer program is made possible with support from the Queensland Government via Advance Queensland and its Regional Enablers Program.
