Disney's robotic droids are the toast of Silicon Valley

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang invited just one guest onstage during his two-hour keynote address Tuesday: a small robotic droid named Besh.

- Isabelle Bousquette

"Look how smart you are," he said, as Besh bounced along with puppy-like pride.

The thousands jammed into the local hockey arena for AI chip giant Nvidia's annual GTC developers event, dubbed "AI Woodstock," cheered, laughed and whipped out their phones to capture an adorable pet-sized robot.

Besh, created by Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, is based on a character from a "Star Wars" videogame.

"It's a cute Disney robot. Of course it's going to steal the show," said Lebaredian, vice president of Omniverse and simulation technology at Nvidia.

But it was also a precursor of one of Nvidia's latest innovations, a physics engine called Newton designed to train robots on how to navigate the physical world.

Nvidia says Newton, which is expected to be available later this year and was co-developed with Google DeepMind and Disney Research, will have implications for training robots in areas like healthcare and logistics, fueling what Lebaredian said will become a $10 trillion industry that redefines the value and availability of human labor.

Some of these industry-specific robots were also showcased on the convention floor: one sorted small cubes into different piles, another struggled to push a vacuum cleaner around a small rug.