Conceptually, the demo is showing a kind of omnidirectional conveyer. It’s a fun implementation of tech that has been used in shipping and fulfillment for a while.

https://youtu.be/HV2zh6ZDgUs https://youtu.be/XAokGOEjAFs

Companies tend to shotgun out a bunch of patent soup unrelated to actual working prototypes during R&D. The media latches on to the most interesting sounding thing they can find relating to a demo so you end up with “ai controlled space lasers” describing something that’s actually much more mundane.