In this interview from CES 2026, Jay Iyengar, chief technology officer of Oshkosh, joins theCUBE’s Rob Strechay to discuss how the company is transforming critical end markets through a convergence of AI, robotics and electrification. Iyengar explains Oshkosh’s philosophy of "working forward" from customer pain points rather than developing technology in isolation. The conversation highlights how Oshkosh leverages its diverse portfolio to cross-pollinate innovations, such as adapting autonomous defense targets into perimeter security robots for the "airport of the future," ensuring technology serves the everyday heroes performing the toughest jobs in communities.
The discussion dives deeper into the practical application of "Physical AI" to enhance productivity, efficiency and safety without replacing human workers. Iyengar details real-world use cases, including intelligent refuse trucks capable of detecting contaminants like batteries to prevent hazards and autonomous systems designed for foreign object detection on runways. He also addresses the critical aspect of building trust in AI, outlining Oshkosh's multi-tiered approach involving clean training data, privacy measures like facial blurring and responsible deployment that focuses on augmenting human capabilities in routine or dangerous tasks.
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Jay Iyengar, Oshkosh | CES 2026
In this interview from CES 2026, Jay Iyengar, chief technology officer of Oshkosh, joins theCUBE’s Rob Strechay to discuss how the company is transforming critical end markets through a convergence of AI, robotics and electrification. Iyengar explains Oshkosh’s philosophy of "working forward" from customer pain points rather than developing technology in isolation. The conversation highlights how Oshkosh leverages its diverse portfolio to cross-pollinate innovations, such as adapting autonomous defense targets into perimeter security robots for the "airport of the future," ensuring technology serves the everyday heroes performing the toughest jobs in communities.
The discussion dives deeper into the practical application of "Physical AI" to enhance productivity, efficiency and safety without replacing human workers. Iyengar details real-world use cases, including intelligent refuse trucks capable of detecting contaminants like batteries to prevent hazards and autonomous systems designed for foreign object detection on runways. He also addresses the critical aspect of building trust in AI, outlining Oshkosh's multi-tiered approach involving clean training data, privacy measures like facial blurring and responsible deployment that focuses on augmenting human capabilities in routine or dangerous tasks.
EVP Chief Technology and Strategic Sourcing OfficerOshkosh
Rob Strechay
Dir./Principal Analyst & HosttheCUBE Research
HOST
In this interview from CES 2026, Jay Iyengar, chief technology officer of Oshkosh, joins theCUBE’s Rob Strechay to discuss how the company is transforming critical end markets through a convergence of AI, robotics and electrification. Iyengar explains Oshkosh’s philosophy of "working forward" from customer pain points rather than developing technology in isolation. The conversation highlights how Oshkosh leverages its diverse portfolio to cross-pollinate innovations, such as adapting autonomous defense targets into perimeter security robots for the "airport o...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What was introduced regarding the transformation of end markets with technology, and what is the focus on in relation to various sectors?add
What considerations should be taken into account for improving efficiency in airport operations through technology?add
>> Hello and welcome back to CES 2026 live from Las Vegas. I'm here with Oshkosh and Jay, who's the CTO of Oshkosh. Welcome on board. I'm glad to be joining you guys again. I was here last year. I got to go on your pre-brief. You've got some really interesting... Besides probably some of the largest pieces to a booth with the fire engine for DFW on the other side and some other pieces and some autonomous vehicles behind us here and robots, you guys really have always been in the AI game. And I think last year you kind of talked about your refuse truck and how it was doing some things about understanding contamination. What have you guys learned over the last year and what's really changed in your putting on exhibit here this year?
Jay Iyengar
>> By the way, thank you for joining us. Thank you for the question. So I mean, for us, we introduced this idea of transforming the end markets with technology, right? It's not one technology, it's a combination of technologies, AI, robotics, electrification, connected solutions, kind of working together to bring a solution to a market. So we kind of introduced this idea of job site of the future, neighborhood of the future, airport of the future in our last CES. And now we are taking you to the next level, which is what you're going to see today. We are a premier manufacturer in over a dozen end markets. Our products are either number one or number two in the markets. And we are known for quality technology, reliability, et cetera, in our markets. And we serve the everyday heroes. Those who have the toughest job in our community. It's that glue that keeps us together. That's what motivates us to do the right thing. So coming back to your technology question, we focus more on what problem we are trying to solve more so than... We don't start with technology, we start with what problem we are trying to solve. We are very, very close to our customers. So we really understand or get their help in their challenges. And that's where everything starts, right?
Rob Strechay
>> So you're working backwards from the use case and the customer.
Jay Iyengar
>> From the customer. I say it's working forward because you don't want to develop a technology in a lab. You do want to do some of that, but if it doesn't provide real value, it becomes technology for the sake of a technology. So from there, we come back and in all of these areas, what we do see is productivity, efficiency, safety. They become three main pillars of what we provide, what the technology can provide, what it can unlock in terms of value. And then Oshkosh being very diverse manufacturer, we can take technology from one domain and take it to another domain. So you see an example of robotics right behind me here. This is actually developed for our defense application called the trackless moving target. Within defense, when they're trying to do target practice, they kind of selected us to develop a robotics platform that actually drives randomly that can actually do a target practice. That robotics platform, we're taking that, applying it to the airport application. So that's the way the airport of the future comes into it. You heard a lot about AI, AI probably all day today and the last few days. We actually go into the physical world. We take the AI into the physical world, right? Having the right level of edge compute on our devices, whether our device... This particular one is actually a perimeter security robot at the airport. Foreign object detection is a really big deal at the airports. You don't want animals or a deer or any of those things crossing that and that part of it. Physical security, you want to make sure that the right personnel is on the ground. There is a lot of jobs at the airport that are, you could say routine, mundane and very human intensive that don't need to be. We're not saying we need to replace people. It's more that we need to augment the work that they do and make sure that they can do it more efficiently, take less time, and that's been the theme of it. So we are advancing AI and the technologies that I mentioned across the board. And many of these technologies are already in the customer's hands. Everything you are seeing here isn't that far away from really making it... Nothing here is a bridge too far, if you think about it. But the key is we want to make sure that our customers... And that's really important, make sure that customers... When I say customer, I don't just mean those who buy our product. People that use our product, people that get in our vehicle, the end user.
Rob Strechay
>> The people who are driving it.
Jay Iyengar
>> The end user.
Rob Strechay
>> Yes.
Jay Iyengar
>> And think of the whole life cycle, the service, all of those things have to be taken into account as you're deploying technology. So if you just take a look at the refuse collection, talk about the possibility of the AI, right? You said last year you saw the detecting of the refuge-
Rob Strechay
>> The contaminants. Yes.
Jay Iyengar
>> Contaminants, and we're advancing that. Today we'll be launching key customer fleets and we're actually beginning to collect data information. We like to launch the vehicles with our customers initially, get some data, make sure it's mature before we go full scale.
Rob Strechay
>> So one of the things I had questions that comes up with that kind of stuff is trust and responsibility with the AI as well. How do you see your customers pushing you on that as well? Because they're obviously concerned as well.
Jay Iyengar
>> I think that's a really great question. By the way, yesterday I was on a panel of all about AI and the community and the trust question just came up. So we are working on real applications, real customers. It's a physical AI. I would say we kind of build... Trust is earned, as we say, right? We build it in kind of a multi-tier way. First is the data sets used for training the AI models. In most cases, look at them as supervisory AI models. They have to be really clean and we need to be very comfortable with the data sets. That's where it starts, right? The second piece is how and where and how much you deploy. I think I talked about the moments of autonomy. Are the systems capable of full autonomous all the time? Absolutely. Technology is ready. The question is, you want to be really careful of how and where we deploy it. Make sure it augments the work people do versus just going, let me just go completely take a human out of it. It's really about how a technology deploys. And the third is privacy. In many cases, we make sure that we do things like facial blurring, right? In some of our autonomous judge bridge technologies, we have cameras, we see people, we can count people. There's things that we can do, but we make sure we follow things like facial blurring technology. Facial blurring is harder to do than you think, actually. And then we want to make sure that what we save in terms of data retention piece, retain something that is absolutely necessary, retain the outcome versus the actual data. You saw the refuse collection, you saw that we can detect 27 different things on there. And we know the home address. There's a lot of information that is known as a part of this, but just retain what's required and not just save everything. So it's a gradual process to how you earn the trust, but those are kind of our core principles. Of course, cybersecurity is a given. We've got to make sure that vehicles are cyber secure.
Rob Strechay
>> Absolutely. So as we look out, I was here last year, here today, as we look out to next year, what do you really hope that you can say that your customers have driven you to, pun intended, next year with what you're doing? And not just with AI, but how AI helps them be more efficient, helps them do more with the people that they have there.
Jay Iyengar
>> Our customers are very, very interested in technology in some of these solutions, because they know technology can solve their issues. An example would be intelligent fleet management. I mean, your refuse or even delivery is not just one vehicle. It's an ecosystem of vehicles that need to work together to be able to do that. They want us to make sure that we detect more and more batteries. People throw batteries along with their... Never throw your battery.
Rob Strechay
>> There's actually another setup for recycling from the US Forestry Service over in the other hall that's doing a whole thing on that as well.
Jay Iyengar
>> Yeah. So the combination of if you contaminate your... You take your recycle, put your yard waste and a battery, that's a recipe for something really bad to happen. We've got a broad, very strong request for... I mean, an example is on the airport side, airlines and airports are asking for the technology. We are actually beginning to deploy them in some of these things I talked about, perimeter security robots, all that stuff in their innovation pipeline and they want to get comfortable with it. I mean, even this thing with the end effectors and the job site of the future. We have got partnership with key construction companies that they are actually asking us to say, hey, we want to try this out. Can you actually provide us... It needs to be very specific use case. It cannot be generally a broad thing. Hey, this can do everything.
Rob Strechay
>> You're going task by task, use case by use case. That's great.
Jay Iyengar
>> And wherever the most opportunities are. Again, all of the interest of faster, if you can save time, awesome. Do the job more efficiently just in terms of it takes less people to do the same thing and people can move on to something higher level functions, safety, injury reduction, if they're able to not hurt themselves by doing tough, repetitive tasks. Training, it takes a long time to get someone to be really good at... These jobs are hard jobs to get these jobs. And then being able to attract talent. There's a shortage of resources, shortage of talent, and being able to attract talent to the industry. That has been kind of the theme of what we are getting from every one of our customers in every one of our applications.
Rob Strechay
>> Well, Jay, thank you very much. I appreciate this, and I hope to be talking to you about this again next year.
Jay Iyengar
>> Absolutely. Looking forward to it.
Rob Strechay
>> Thank you very much.
Jay Iyengar
>> By the way, it's a great time to be in technology because it's really making an impact and there's nothing more rewarding than seeing a technology make an impact in people's lives.
Rob Strechay
>> We've talked about digital transformation for the last 10, 15 years. This is really pushing true digital transformation. I love how you can bring how it's actually getting to that end user of the product and how it's helping them. So thank you again.
Jay Iyengar
>> Absolutely. Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Rob Strechay
>> And thank you for watching this episode of The Cube. We'll be back with you with more from CES 2026 live in Las Vegas.
