There are numerous reasons why a company will jump on a hype bubble. It tends to be good PR and projects an impression of forward thinking. Investors generally reward it and often punish companies that fail to jump on the bandwagon. Finally, CEOs are by no means immune to popular manias and fear of missing out; if anything, it's just the opposite.
The question that you need to keep asking yourself while reading
any of these humanoid robot puff pieces (other than who stands to gain
from another tech bubble) is: why bipedal? Wheels and treads are
cheaper, simpler, more reliable, and generally more stable. If you do
need to have a walking robot, it's generally best to go with: "Four legs
good, two legs bad." Quadrupeds are simpler and more stable, which is
probably why they have found their way into real-world applications
while bipedal robots have not.
2025 Is the Year of the Humanoid Robot Factory Worker by Russell Brandom
Later this year, Boston Dynamics plans to put its all-electric humanoid Atlas robot to work in a Hyundai factory. The new version of the bot, evolved from the hydraulic Atlas model that’s been performing viral video demos since 2013, made its public debut last spring. But while the company’s dog-like Spot and warehouse robot Stretch are already deployed at industrial sites, the Hyundai pilot will be the first time Atlas is used in commercial manufacturing.
Boston Dynamics, which was acquired by Hyundai for $1.1 billion in 2021, is coy about how the robot will be used, but the general idea is that it’s designed to be stronger and more reliable than a human worker. “The robot is going to be able to do things that are difficult for humans,” Boston Dynamics spokesperson Kerri Neelon says. “Like pick up very heavy objects and carry things that are awkward for humans to carry.” [Doesn't the very fact that something is "awkward for humans to carry" suggest that a humanoid robot is not the way to go for that task? -- MP]
BD has great engineers and well-designed robots, but they (and Hyundai) have a huge incentive to see this hype bubble continue to inflate—both for the stock price and to promote their other, more useful robots.
Atlas will have friends: 2025 looks set to be the year that multipurpose humanoid robots, until now largely confined to research labs, go commercial. Some have already taken their first tentative robot steps into paid work, with Agility Robotics’ Digit moving items in a warehouse and Figure’s eponymous biped shipping out to commercial customers last year.
I'll try to comment on these in more detail later, but if you watch videos of Digit and Figure 02 working you'll notice three things:
1. There is no reason for them to be using legs rather than a cheaper and more efficient wheeled base.
2. They aren't doing anything all that impressive.
3. By comparison, the non-featured, non-humanoid robots seen in the background are really amazing.
Tech giants are also getting in on the trend: Both Apple and Meta are rumored to be working on some kind of consumer-facing humanoid robot. A 2024 Goldman Sachs report estimates that humanoid robots will represent a $38 billion market by 2035 —more than six times what the firm projected a year earlier.
Two things:
1. This is exactly what you'd expect in a bubble. Companies jumping on the bandwagon. Analysts suddenly pumping up their estimates in order to be part of the next big thing.
2. Given the amounts being invested, that $38 billion market by 2035 (which is itself based on optimistic assumptions) doesn't seem like that big of a number, particularly with respect to Tesla, a company with a valuation of over one trillion dollars, much, possibly most of which is now based on the perceived potential of its robotics division.
The basic promise of humanoid robots is that they will be able to switch between multiple tasks, just like their human peers. It’s a fundamentally different approach from traditional assembly line automation, which builds an entire environment around the specific tasks required for manufacturing. Jonathan Hurst, cofounder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics, expects its robots to sit alongside that process, not disrupt it.
For the 8,000th time... It has become embarrassingly commonplace to equate multipurpose robots with humanoids, despite the fact that there is absolutely no good reason— from an engineering or economic standpoint— to do so. In fact, it's just the opposite. There are any number of tasks that the human body is badly designed to tackle, including many—probably most—of those suggested for humanoid robots, such as the previously mentioned carrying of large, heavy packages.
“A purpose-built automation solution is always going to be higher performance and lower cost for that purpose,” Hurst says. “That’s great if you have 24/7 operations for that specific thing you want to do.” But for tasks that don’t need to run around the clock, a flexible robot could be more productive.
Hurst deserves credit for honesty here -- for a given task, purpose built will always be better and cheaper -- but he understates how small the segment of manufacturing labor is left, particularly once AI expands the number of tasks a purpose built robot can perform.