Humanoid Robot Welders are Coming to St. Bernard Parish
Louisiana launches a pilot with SSE Steel Fabrication and Houston-based Persona AI to test humanoid welding robots in St. Bernard Parish, positioning the state as a proving ground for industrial AI. Leaders say the robots are designed to augment workers by taking on high-risk, hard-to-fill jobs.
NOLA.com | Rich Collins | 1/22/26 | Original Article
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On Thursday, Jan. 22, Louisiana’s economic development agency and St. Bernard-based SSE Steel Fabrication announced an agreement with Houston-based tech startup Persona AI to launch a pilot program at SSE to develop humanoid robotics for industrial uses. Greater New Orleans Inc., southeast Louisiana’s economic development nonprofit, also is participating.
The pilot program is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of this year at SSE’s Violet facility, about a 30-minute drive from downtown New Orleans. The company is a woman-owned steel fabrication contractor that specializes in structural fabrication for commercial, industrial and municipal projects across the United States.
Under the terms of the nonbinding agreement, Louisiana Economic Development will commit up to $50,000 to cover the cost of Persona employees traveling to Louisiana from the company’s headquarters in Houston and its office in Pensacola, Florida. If performance thresholds are met, LED also will negotiate in good faith for a lease of two humanoid robots from Persona for operational testing and deployment at SSE.
Persona views the pilot as a chance to collect data and gain real-world validation ahead of wider deployments of the machines. For local business champions, it’s a chance for the state to get ahead of technological changes that could affect legacy industries and a first step toward becoming a proving ground.
“The only way to see if technology is a net positive or negative is to test it,” Josh Fleig, LED’s chief innovation officer, said in a phone interview. “We want to get our hands dirty and find out of these things can weld effectively in a Louisiana steel fabrication facility. If it works, we’ll try to capture some of that value.”
The memorandum of understanding, signed last week, lays out a three-phase rollout of the machines in Louisiana.
First, Persona will send engineers to SSE to study the behavior of human welders, some of whom will be wearing motion capture suits as they work. The goal is to gather data that will help the company build hardware and software, which will be deployed slowly and incrementally until it can eventually take over tasks, working alongside tradespeople.
In the second phase, LED will lease two of the robots for testing at SSE under Persona’s supervision. If the robots are a success, the state could lease more robots to use at other facilities around the state.
“This collaboration allows us to explore emerging technologies where they matter most, on the shop floor, not in a lab,” Justin Airhart, chief operations officer of SSE Steel Fabrication, said in a statement.
Launched in 2024 by Nicolaus Radford, Jerry Pratt and Jide Akinyode, Persona aims to develop intelligent humanoid robots designed for industrial use.
After working for nearly eight years in NASA robotics labs and founding a separate venture, Nauticus Robotics, Radford said he created the new company to find real-world uses for the machines. He thinks industrial applications make more sense than the “household” prototypes that have drawn laughs on social media and late-night talk shows as they are seen in videos struggling to load a dishwasher or washing machine.
Persona’s rugged humanoid platforms are being designed to operate in environments originally built for humans rather than the existing fixed industrial robots that operate in settings purpose-built for automation. The hope is that the humanoid machines will be able to use existing tools, navigate uneven terrain and adapt to changing conditions the same way a person would.
Radford and his co-founders are building machines to perform what they call “dull, dirty, dangerous and declining” jobs. Radford said the machines will augment, not replace, human workers as they take on high-risk or hard-to-staff tasks while experienced tradespeople move into supervisory and quality assurance roles.
“Three or four years ago, humanoids were still just really research things you’d see in YouTube videos,” Radford said during an interview recently after a signing ceremony at SSE. “Now, with modern AI, they are becoming really usable and something you can build a business around. That’s why there’s a gold rush.”
Last May, Persona signed an agreement with HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering and HD Hyundai Robotic with the goal of delivering prototype humanoid robots capable of performing complex welding tasks by the end of this year. The deal says Persona will develop the hardware and artificial intelligence software, while another company creates the welding tools.
The Louisiana pilot program that will precede that project came together when SSE’s Airhart, whose wife, Mindy Nunez Airhart, is SSE’s CEO, reached out to Persona to suggest a collaboration after seeing stories online about the company.
On Jan. 16, Radford, the Airharts and state and local officials gathered for a photo opportunity and signing ceremony at SSE. A couple of Persona employees carried a foam mockup of the welding robots across the facility’s gravel parking lot as stakeholders hopped into cars to drive to downtown New Orleans for a second signing ceremony.
The pilot comes as tech companies are making progress developing humanoid robots worldwide, though the machines still aren’t in widespread use.
“Our position is not AI is good or AI is bad, but AI is coming so we’d better jump in and figure what kind of value it brings to Louisiana,” said LED’s Fleig. “We’re dispassionate about it, although I personally geek out on the tech.”