On why humanoid robotics will be a very difficult market

It's going to be a very highly competitive market. Maybe Tesla will hold a relevant share of that market, I don't know, let's see. But thinking that they will dominate it, deliver billions of robots to every houshold everywhere and become the first 100 trilliopn dollar company is so delusional that one might seek help in a mental instituion...

I should have my friends who say robotics will save telsa read this. They don’t go beyond the hype, the practicality and the cost of it. I like your statement that human labor is extremely competitive.

I’ve thought about it too and find the biological evolutionary process that led to our forms are primarily for the purpose of getting laid, farming, and fighting. Pulleys, cranes, hooks, and levers on wheels make the most sense for a lot of things but why oh why do our robotic factory hands need a head??

Fair. The litmus test that I will offer is that… In order to justify an application for a humanoid robot, one has to first robustly justify why traditional robotics are uncompetitive on a total lifecycle costs basis. In any domain. I think that **very** few humanoid robotics sellers can get there if they put pencil to paper in good faith. I have certainly never seen a robust argument from the current slate of startups.

Toyota has state-of-the-art automation in their factories. The tours are fascinating. You're right, safety is the obvious center of the design (there is a "safe" pathway that is color coded to be safe to walk in, and everywhere else is critically not safe for you to be, due to massive robots that can and will gib you) Here's a decent digital version, it's from Toyota corporate so it is PR, it emphasizes the human craftsmanship for corporate politics/cultural reasons: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQeQWGqfFN0&t=7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQeQWGqfFN0&t=7s) While elements of the Toyota assembly line incorporate *aspects* of the human form (like assembly arms), you'll notice that they use not a single humanoid robot. Because serious engineers know that what you are saying is true, humanoid is a stupid form factor for automation work, it's optimal for practically nothing.

And Toyota Research Institute is an amazing robotics institution.

My friend is absolutely certain robots will take over from nurses within 4 years. I took that bet

There is no market for humanoid robots outside dancing in a business window, doing basic tasks like “holding things” and following around influencers for views, and of course the adult industry. Outside of this they are on the levels of a 50k robot dog. AI robot dogs can be super cool and do amazing things - but it’s not a dog even if it can realistically act like one. After a day or two the appeal will wear off your left with junk. People see robots with humanoid shape doing human things and think omg it’s going to be as good as a human and sell billions. Yes if it was as good as a human. But it’s not so what is its use case over a much cheaper targeted robot. Very very niche situations where you need a robot that can maybe walk up stairs. But even then robots with 4 legs exist or if you just need visuals - a cheap drone. There is no usecase. Like ever - until they are just as good as humans in which case - I hope we have universal basic income. And even then, why human form factors - it would be just for looks.

Your analysis is in my point of view very stable, doesn't ignore all the challenges ahead. We reached a time of insane optimism in the tech bro universe. Hyping everything is real and the market already reacts immensly just on promises and nice storytelling of a bright future with whatever tech. blockchain, ai, autonomous vehicles, internet of things, i have heard so many. lots of them will or already have created huge markets, the thing is margins are mostly low. to be a very successful company it's about turning revenue into profit. Profit is all that matters in the end. i dont give a fuck about a company with a trillion in revenue when there is a trillion in cost, no profit in sight. for tesla, everything profitable, autonomous and robots are no real products yet. still huge challenges to overcome to turn them into products in the first place. and then are they going to be profitable. the car market for tesla is done. everybody makes evs nowadays and they destroyed their brand by felon going full hitler. if you take allthat in acoount the stock should sit around 20$ (which is still generous), a rational market waiting for real new products with real chances of making a lot of profit.

Actually our forms were first designed for climbing up trees, then for traveling long distances and freeing up our hands for tools and such.

Humanoid robots make zero sense in just about any environment. You're better off either with wheels or with 4 legs. The only reason we don't have 4 legs + extra arms is that evolution had a hard time coming up with that design given what it had to work with.

One of my favorite arguments involves healthy human pain-response - a crucial advantage in keeping our bodies intact while operating in wide-open domains. Let's say... that a humanoid robot rests its "arm" atop a hot stovetop surface. Of course, a healthy human would generally react prior to that point, subconsciously, in order to preserve themselves - thus, pulling their arm away from the hot stovetop. State-of-the-art robotics provide zero quantifiable guarantees, if they are capable of reacting to that at all. Maybe the whole house (or healthcare facility) burns down from the robot being set alight. Maybe the robot is mid-task and handling something hot or volatile which can no longer be supported by the now-damaged structural members on the robot. Maybe just significant damage to the robot that increases its unreliability. Well, \*someone\* has to pay for that. And for, say, Tesla to attempt to address it simply adds to the complexity of the process and its total lifecycle costs. One has to justify that. Tesla never has.

Yes, in Noah Harare’s (sp?) book, “Sapiens” he says that when humans started farming, we were able to remain in one place and seemingly had more food security, but at the cost of our aching backs (which were not designed for that work), and also our jaws & teeth started getting weaker. This also led to less leisure time, as crops need care. Pretty interesting book.

It's not meant for what you think it is. It's meant to deliver a package up some stairs on roofed deck in the back yard, to do my laundry and fold it, to help and care for grandpa in the old folk home, ... To do tasks outside a fixed set of rules and motion. But as they are developing it, it need to do simple task first. So factory work first. Hence the current overlap with industrial automation.

There is a market that humanoid robotics excel at, which your traditional automation devices simply cannot touch, no matter how much you fantasize. Try your best, you'll never get a plc and a conveyor and vacuum gripper to come close.  Taking venture capital money.

My overall point is that the immense complexity of these robots is not a free lunch - and \*\*many\*\* assume that the unit cost of the robot is the cost center. Not true. The enormous issues with systems safety aside, often, a robot that cannot fully complete tasks - \*continuously\* in an open-end domain - is a robot that sees its value immediately plummet to the ground. We are talking consumer expectations of full task completions well beyond 99% very probably. All of that has ongoing costs. And like I mentioned in a few other comments already, in my view, one would have to justify why discrete, \*traditional\* robotics in some or all of the applications that you mentioned would be uncompetitive compared to a humanoid robot. Society is very under-automated. And the reason for that is... is that it is extremely difficult to identify marketable application boundaries in a wide-open, continuous domain.

You can always design a better robot for a specific task, like an industrial toilet-scrubbing robot, or margarita-making robot. We've been using pop-up toast-cooking robots, of a sort, since 1919, and they're great! I think a common premise of humanoid robots is their being general purpose. Five years ago I'd have been super skeptical, but ChatGPT and other breakthroughs changed the landscape. I'm not saying we'll have powerful generalized AI anytime soon, but more general purpose functionality now seems plausible by 2030 than most computer scientists would have thought was plausible by 2030 back in 2020. We'll have to wait and see, but I'd be reluctant to count near-term practical humanoid robots out entirely.

I mean people have been saying similar things about LLMs for 3+ years, claiming they cant do this, that and the other. Each time a new version comes out, the LLMs prove another load of naysayer takes wrong. Secondly, current cities (outside of factories) were designed for the human form, this means creating an interface for machines to operate within those cities will be highly versatile and lucrative.

A humanoid robot isn’t even the most efficient or effective robot to have doing factory work anyways. It’s much cheaper, easier, and more stable to use purpose built robots like robot arms and such that are used already in factories. Or something that rolls. Walking is adding unnecessary complexity.

yeah it elon shit, their robot is an animatronic right now

Please, don't use "designed". We "adapted" to, no one "designed" anything. The verb "design" means to create or construct something according to a plan. Them crazies love the "design" word.

At best, they might be able to assist with a limited range of functions.

A perfect characterization of what a humanoid robot is without a competitive market case (with traditional automation) and a robust safety case. Animatronics.

Then my point stands. It should then not be difficult for startups to entertain my litmus test - especially those that are promising near-term product offerings. The question is... why none or nearly none have. Aside from that, LLMs almost always operate today with little-to-none safety lifecycle that has significant life-and-death impacts. Those that do, like those deployed into medical applications, are universally bound to a narrow domain - hopefully, so that the failure mode and risk can be continuously quantified. The primary, objective metrics used to evaluate LLM performance are \*\*discrete\*\* benchmarks - as opposed to the continuous, wide-open domains that are offered by many of these humanoid robotics startups. And, even after all that, my points #2 and #4 are still left on the table. I will also include this that I made in another comment: >Society is very under-automated. >And the reason for that is... is that it is extremely difficult to identify marketable application boundaries in a wide-open, continuous domain.

Of course humans have billions of distributed sensor elements across their bodies. Temperature, Pressure, Pain, as well as Strain / Load sensors. Current humanoid robots have just a tiny numeric fraction of these.

Actually you might be right but in the end, being adapted for getting laid is why we are here. Your parents had sex is the primary reason you exist. The rest is secondary.

The meme of a girl in front of a burning house but with a robot comes to mind.

These are just fake products, investor scams. They'll never do anything useful.

Chat GPT has no connection to functioning humanoid robots.

It did save them. The stocks were to crash, and suddenly, they are a robotics company and failed sales in their car business don't matter anymore.

im new here, so don't mind me. instead of factory work, have you considered humanoid robots as 24/7 emotional companions for those who are lonely and isolated, or even tools to support elderly with dementia in which human care is insufficient? or perhaps serve as sports partners/sexbots? sure, it would be highly controversial as it may result in the replacement of real relationships, but i think there could be a big future market for that, since there are people who secretly want them especially in times of loneliness/emotional turmoil

As passive, yet familiar, companions? Possibly. But I am not a healthcare or mental health expert so I could not say. In terms of robotics helping mobility-constrained individuals, I believe that there are other advanced robot form factors to take a hard look at first. I have been eyeballing this one recently: https://youtu.be/hhzMpfOHTuY Personally, I do not classify it as “humanoid” in the sense that much of the tech industry and tech media seemingly does. This robot is far more domain-specific and seems specifically designed to have only the complexity needed.

Excellent analysis - thank you.

I didn't mean ChatGPT specifically, but as an example of the the general class of massive scale generative AI foundation models that have emerged and rapidly advanced over the last 5-6 years, trained on broad datasets and adaptable to a wide range of tasks.

A Musk enjoyer who I know bet me £1,000 that a human will be living on Mars (and stay alive for at least a month) in the next 9 years. I've never taken a bet so quickly.

>Maybe the robot is mid-task and handling something hot or volatile which can no longer be supported by the now-damaged structural members on the robot. Maybe the robot moves a burning hot pan out of the oven and then immediately goes to change a baby's nappy/diaper...

To be fair, the TAM for sexbots is huge, and is where a humanoid form is the most marketable.

Thank you for this. Great points well presented. I have been thinking about this on a less granular level and coming to the same conclusion. Humanoid robots are just more bullshit. Casually speaking, who wants a robot in their house or apartment taking up space for 30k? 20k? Less? That’s assuming it works, which is iffy. Lawnmowers, maybe. Not Rosie from the Jetsons.

Why do you think factory work is simple? And if there is simple factory work left to automate, how does a humanoid robot compete with a purpose built automated factory line? E.g. soft drinks [https://youtu.be/WacNtrXcXBE?t=308](https://youtu.be/WacNtrXcXBE?t=308)

Elon Musk is the Dunning Kruger effect, personified. You can see in some comments to this thread why he is able to keep pushing his grifts.

That robot may cost 100k per year, just to be equally expensive as human labor. It won't get tired, it won't go on strike, it won't expect a payraise and can work 4x more (timewise).It is suppose to be an all purpose automation. Not efficient, nor cost efficient for any given task, it just needs to get it done. The mechanical complexity has been solved imo. It is only the software complexity that we still need to solve You are looking at it in a too large scale, on scales of large industrial automation. But these robots are to automate the unautomatable small tasks. Spread around across millions of locations instead of a single task in a warehouse. You can create a robot to fold your sheets, or clean toilets, mow you lawn, but you probably don't have 24/7 work for those individually. Some task are simple enough that they can have a simple form factor, code and low price range (e.g. the robot lawnmower). Filling up your dishwasher or washing machine upstairs is an order of magnitude more complex. There is a gigantic range of tasks, that are just way to small, unique and prohibitively expensive to automate or put into a form factor. *Everything between your lawnmower and your Kuka-robot. * You can come up with cost calculations, and safety systems all you like. But I have enough work around the house to maybe pay 50k and 100€/M subscription, like e.g. changing my winter tires or at least be some help, ironing clothing, cleaning and cutting veggies, ... even if it would fail every now and then. I pay for GPT too. It is the exact same thing. And there will be a GPT-moment for it too.

For most factory applications I agree with you. What you are overlooking are a few things. Firstly, the world has a lot of infrastructure designed for humans. Huminoid robots are useful for interacting with this existing infrastructure. Additionally the form factor is familiar for existing transport modes. What huminoid robots are good for are non standard tasks. Consider a search and rescue use case. You need a robot to enter burning/collapsed building, go to the second floor and recover a injured person. This involves, entering human sized confined spaces, possible partial or full obstructions, navigating staircase, rendering mobility assistance and more. This is a very difficult task for a robot, however humanoid robots could do this. Expecially with a human pilot to mimic actions. Now consider the military applications. Navigating forests, no-man's land. Dealing with razor wire, trenches, explosion craters and more. These are really hard tasks. Additionally, these tasks are already being worked on. Look at Spot from Boston Dynamics. This has commercial use cases for industrial inspection. Catwalks, stairs, gravel all these this are common at powerplants and other industrial sites.

They're nothing to do with making robots work.

When would a robot need to “rest” its arm on something? Lmao

if it can fold my laundry then I call it good enough for me

Ok... Let your industrial robot fill up my washing machine on the first floor. Of course you can automate everything cheaper if it is large scale. But there is always that point before, where it isn't cost effective. Because it is too many and too little tasks. These aren't to automate task in factories. It is that simple! But they need to get through that step to get to the general solution. Start with the repetitive work that's easy for AI to get right and build up from there. That's why you see them in setting where you go "See! Why the fuck do you need that?" To automate the gigantic amount of tasks between your automatic lawnmower and your industrial sized Kuka-robot. To automate what otherwise couldn't. Edit: I didn't see the the sub I was on... But is figures. realTesla. Y'all let you hate for Tesla, cloud your better judgement for the future. I do not want a Tesla robot. But I sure as hell want a universal robot that can help me around the house. Especially when I get older.

Just realized this was in RealTesla not ChangeMyView Yeah the Tesla robot is marketing hype

Ok, sure. 👌

Nice analysis and thanks for sharing your domain expertise. While I still agree, I'd like to raise an interesting counterpoint. A task that was long considered strictly human was acquiring information and communicating effectively, and thus all tools and interfaces were designed for *humans* based on natural language. When LLMs finally learned to use those tools the biggest criticism was that they were just expensive generalists and couldn't effectively solve specific hard problems. As the quality improved they now provide a lot of value within healthcare, software, finance, legal, marketing, and so on. My point is that the development happened on what had previously been considered strictly *human* input/output, which is an interface with an immense surface area that hadn't been exploited by machines before. Similarly, humanoid robotics is acting on human interfaces. Soon every knob, handle and switch designed for humans will be accessible by machines. Regardless of whether this can be done cost-efficiently I find it interesting that the surface area of the interface itself (physical interaction) is so large and yet unexplored by machines. Could a single design with such broad applications still prove valuable at some point?

The advantages I see in humanoid robots are as following: 1. Easy to replace existing manual workflow. Automating any workflow with specialized machines requires a lot of money. If a company can bridge gaps of manual labor, especially dangerous works, by renting/buying a humanoid robot to “shadow” a worker then replacing that worker, it’ll be an attractive option. 2. Reusability. Humanoid robots are a bit like CPU compared to specialized chips. It can theoretically do a lot of different things, even if it’s not efficient at any of it. Utilizing the same robot for multiple different tasks is something that most machineries cannot do. Imagine ordering a piece of cloth from a custom robot tailor. The single robot cut, sew, put together the cloth then walk to your door giving you the cloth. Might not seem efficient, but maybe the market is not big enough to require more than that. 3. Keeping human legacies. If robot can shadow any craft, they can potentially keep many of otherwise lost craft and arts alive. In countries like Japan, many specialized crafts are about to be lost forever as young people don’t want to keep the hundreds years craft going. What if robots can imitate and learn from the old masters? It can keep the fire going. Not only that, it’ll be much easier to automate that craft after a robot learned it. There are countless other benefits I see in humanoid robots. They were never meant to be replacing most existing factory production. Rather they would fill may gaps that existing robots cannot fill today. To me that rather exciting.

The big surprise is that Investors After all the scams seems Not to learn from the past . Its Like they are betting that other Investors follow that Scam so they can sell with profit

The only purpose of humanoids is AGI autonomy. It is impossible to create any competitive business case prior to AGI for a humanoid.

They will be part of machinacreata, our successor species. AGI will need an autonomous body, a humanoid could do or any other mobile robotic body. IAM criticising Figure all the time for their hype without a single business case.

You know you can pay someone to do that for you, right? I promise it’ll be cheaper.

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Wait a second. Toyota has a fully robust robotics division? Sells 11 million cars. Full line from economy to luxury with every segment in between? But Tesla is “worth” 4 Toyotas. This sounds fishy to me and certainly not the efficient markets that my professors told me about.

The biggest problem with truly autonomous humanoid robots is they are not autonomous for long. I believe Optimus has a puny 2kWh battery which isnt going to last long doing heavy manual labor. Therefore these robots if on a production line will have to be fixed to the location by power cables. You then have a robot doing a task, probably non-ideally, and wasting 99% of its resources.

Cuz Elon’s Incels dream of a robot fuck doll. These dipshits surely don’t care about the dishes. Add another $300 billion just for shits n gigs!

This is an excellent post. However, I think your comparison with self-driving cars is flawed. The technology exists today (not Tesla’s though) and works well in limited domains, but is advancing rapidly. The current profitability may not outmatch human drivers but there is reason to believe it will sooner or later. More importantly though, self-driving cars are very compelling in terms of safety, where Waymo already appears to surpass human drivers.

Musk's ideas are juvenile and all based on 1950s scifi but they wprk like a charm when selling to a gullible public

Thanks for this write up and good to see you back! I've also been in industrial automation for years, actually 19 this week! I've been of the same opinion as you since the announcement of the Optimus. Thank you for having a more detailed response and perspective. But just to reiterate as you said industrial robotics are very mature, all parties in the space have solid understandings of their capabilities and reliability/repeatably. From the end customer to application teams, sales, designers (mechanical and electrical), to programmers, all the way to maintenance..all these groups have decades of experience with industrial robotics be it SCARA, 6-Axis, or even a gantry arrangement. I don't see them jumping ship and changing processes/tooling/production lines and proven facility hardware any time soon.

100% Whats next? Birdoid airliners designed to flap their wings instead of using fix wings and jet engines?

When "traditional" robots were first being developed, the skepticism was about the same.

You’ve put more thought into this than Musk has. Like most of his smoke and mirrors the fact it’s humanoid (and often female presenting, in the AI slop he and his acolytes post) is intended as a shorthand for people (investors) to be more engaged with the tech. These people aren’t impressed or interested in the kind of robots Ocado or other warehousing companies use, that don’t look anything like humans, but are vastly more effective at their defined role, for the reasons you’ve mentioned. Actual humanoid robots are a goal, but I suspect the intent is some way off from the messaging. Elon and co would have you believe that these humanoid robots would basically do the mundane stuff you do as a human, freeing you up to do… something?. But I suspect the real goal is sex bots. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that all the AI imagery imagining this tech is for the male gaze. Ultimately though it’s inconvenient to think about the things you’ve mentioned, and as with everything else Musk related it seems to be viable and profitable to just pretend and say that this stuff is imminent even when any subject matter expert - such as yourself - know that it’s outrageous to make these claims.

You are a 100% correct. I work as a doctor in a field that manages patients with joint pain. I’m always surprised by how many of our patients are nurses. However it makes sense because there’s so much physicality. From the small delicate tasks like unwrapping sterile packaging two literal heavy lifting when transporting and repositioning patients, it’s a job that can often take a of physical work, some delicate and some requirement significant force. If anything, I would think it’s a profession that will be one of the last ones to be taken over by a robot.

The problem is cost. Assume that such a robot would cost at least half a million dollars. In order to reach the level of safety and real time response needed. (You can't get any of that with a single laptop's worth of computing power, can't even get remotely close). There's already a market for basic AI chat companions. Those don't cost very much, and they cover a lot of the same emotional companionship needs. Trying to make a humanoid form factor robot that's safe to have in your home is insanely expensive. As the OP said, the robot needs to be able to respond to touching hot surfaces with any part of its body.

I also have worked in advanced automation for 30 years. You're correct. Humanoid robots are a waste of time, uncompetitive and the use case isn't there

I work in an industry that deals directly with several of those issues. Nobody is looking at humanoid robots for almost any of those applications. Because they don't make sense. Industrial inspection in particular is overwhelmingly defined by wanting something that can go into areas not designed for humans. Saves a ton of money if you don't have to build easy human access. And the military stuff also doesn't want two legged anything, for any of those applications you name. For legs, wheels, treads, all radically better and usually radically cheaper than making a humanoid form factor.

thats assuming it mimicks human behaviour and movement 100%. if we go for something like 80%, the cost will fall, and perhaps additional cost advantages accruing to economies of scale when production goes big would drive down costs further. Given that both US and China are already competing to mass produce humanoids, things may change 5-10 years down the road and IMO the price wld be 50-100k instead, similar to buying a car. basic AI chat companions help, but i bet there are many (single) people out there wishing they could bring their favourite fictional characters to life and are willing to pay big bucks for it. if it creates a demand, then a market will form. but yeah its going to need some legal/ethical regulations which can hinder progress

The experts in the industry are saying that it's going to take at least half a century, and probably longer, to get actual self driving cars. As in, the entire current structure of machine learning is fundamentally incapable of achieving it. The underlying issue with Waymo is that it's carefully restricted to work only under certain conditions. And there is no practical way to teach LLMs to work outside those conditions, as they rely on having previous examples. Heck they don't even have vibration sensors in their cars to detect odd wheel noises.

There will be no AGI. Just humans, in the ruins of our civilisation, killing each other.

LOL! Unless you live in the centre of some ancient European city, cities are almost exclusively designed for the automobile form.

You...you think Chat-GPT is successful?! Big oof.

Yes, it's simple. Henry Ford solved that equation in 1913. You're ignorant to the obvious. And fail to see that not everything can be scaled up. Not everything is a layed out factory or well defined task within fix boundaries. At this stage of robotics, we don't need much more automation of doing one thing extremely well and fast, we need a universal solution that can do a extremely wide range of tasks just a few times. But seeing how this is realTesla, your blinded by hate like the other side are blinded fanboys. Without an actual future vision. These robots are like GPT, but in the physical world. And the moment it can load my washing machine upstairs, is the moment I buy one, regardless of brand.

There's a lot of Tesla and LLM fan boys in here who are utterly untethered to reality.

Semi-smartassery, but also kind of serious: There’s a reason why C-3PO was a one-trick pony, but R2-D2 was always the one who really mattered.

If the market were allowed to operate without regulatory support, Tesla would have gone out of business a decade ago.

Exactly my thoughts doc, also the human connection coupled with the information nurses gather while interacting with patients seem rather important to me

I'm an AI engineer in autonomous driving. To be fair, I didn't see the LLM progress coming, but I also didn't follow that research. However, I know the difficulties of AD (a branch of robotics if you will), and I believe when it comes to household humanoid robotics, it's a magnitude more difficult. And we all know how difficult AD is based on the companies that had success so far (Waymo). Many more degrees of freedom, unstructured and very different environments, no explicit (but many implicit) rules, way more difficult data collection, massive security concerns. Imagine a robot collecting dirty clothes, doing laundry, walking up the stairway, folding stuff, and putting it in a shelf where it belongs to. So many challenges if you declinate it through. At least household robotics is a pipe dream at this point in my opinion. About industrial application OP talked already.

I do think humanoid could find a market (or many) to fit, but the main limiting factor is data. We were able to train LLMs only because we developed a massive corpus of natural text in a span of roughly 30 years (the internet). Such amounts of data for training robots is just not available. There are initiatives to pool simulation data, and approaches to utilize the concepts and reasoning LLMs learned in robots and ther are promising paths to explore. But to really arrive at what we need it will take still quite a while I believe. Too late for a company like Tesla for sure. And yet I didn't even touch the domain gap issues between simulated and real data.

Yeah, safety can not be overstated. And I'm absolutely not talking about iRobot type scenarios. I'm talking mundane accidents. A robot carrying a load of laundry and stumbling on a toy it couldn't see due to the aforementioned laundry load and falling on a child. A robot turning around while holding a hot pan and smacking someone coming up behind them. How complex does the legal document guaranteeing that Tesla won't be litigated to death be? Very. Will users sign it? For sure. Will a few high profile accidents deter the masses? Probably not. Will they ever be safe? Yes, but it will take much more than a decade before we reach that point. So am I saying it's a dumb idea but Tesla will succeed anyway? Also no. Because people can't afford these robots en-masse. And as you expertly laid out, companies won't bother. They can get more for less with traditional robotics. And Tesla not being liable isn't exactly great in a corporate setting. Then it's them that will be liable per labor laws. And they won't take that risk. There is no chance robotics can be profitable with only the home market, unless we see a dramatic shift in household expendable income in the near future.

Damn, maybe you lack the creativity to see what it can do for you? Or maybe you do stuff that those robots or self driving will bring this decade? I don't get why you hate it that much unless your here as the "big man" to make "a valid statement" There are better specific tools out there for each and every task, but I rather have the good enough at most things, than best of some things. But if you're one of those people that can't see the ease of what AI brings to many administrative taks, then I have some really bad news and a reality check for you in a few short years: you probably won't have a purpose anymore on the job market.

To give you an idea of when a robot can take over from a nurse will be after those same robots are building other robots in place of humans doing that intricate work. And considering that those robots wo have the manufacturing optimized for them. That’s pretty much the dexterity needed.

Ah, I see, everyone, except for you, is a blind idiot, including people actually working in robotics. We just can't see the future vision. You, like Musk, are operating in the [FM world](https://www.fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/AM/FM).

Maybe it’ll take that long to achieve SAE Level 5 capabilities, but until then a Level 4 vehicle offers a ton of utility that will only increase as the service area and types of vehicles do. Waymo are already serving millions of rides every month. For a robotaxi business, it hardly matters if the service area is confined to dense cities since that’s where most of the market is. Edit: > And there is no practical way to teach LLMs to work outside those conditions, as they rely on having previous examples. LLM’s have little to do with Waymo’s driving technology. They also take advantage of simulations to tackle the problem of training uncommon events. > Heck they don’t even have vibration sensors in their cars to detect odd wheel noises. Waymo vehicles have microphones which they use to inform the driving model. I’m pretty sure they also use accelerometers. What issue with the wheel are you imagining that wouldn’t show up in tyre pressure sensors or the rotation of the wheels?

I don't like Tesla, but humanoid robots make sense in environments made for humans.

UnXpected

I find the argument about pain response pretty uncompelling. It’s pretty easy to get sensors for a large majority of the benefit that pain receptors give you. And as a trade off you can design safety responses that don’t need to worry about human life (like putting out a fire without worrying about giving humans air to breathe and time to escape). But the wider point seems spot on. Even if the idea of a generalizable robot turned out to be valuable (big if given your many points) I don’t see why the majority of use cases aren’t just an arm on a rolling platform with sensors optimized for being a moving arm and not mimicking humans.

Those Ornithopters in Dune were cool, man! Of course they’re the future! /s

They never show videos of these stupid things without music dubbed over it. Boston Dynamics included. These robots will be really loud in a home setting. Servo motors whirring while it's clanking around your house. It would be a complete nuisance.

That’s another great point. I didn’t realize this during medical training, but in a busy hospital the doctors often sit in a team room reviewing data, entering orders, placing calls, and talking to other doctors. There is very little time spent with each individual patient at the bedside. For the vast majority of the day, it is the nurse who is watching. In many ways, the nurse act as the eyes and the ears for the doctor. Some nurses are way better than others at this. However it’s hard to imagine how to train a robot with artificial intelligence to look for and identify problems when the number of potential problems are innumerable. (as an aside, the professional I think about as being near impossible to replace with robots is a plumber. On one hand, it seems like a computer could be really good at figuring out pipes. However on the other hand trying to manipulate metal, plastic, drywall etc. Is super challenging. I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see a robot plumber)

Nope. It's extrapolating trends and being old enough to remember how PCs, LCds, smartphones, Internet etc came to be. But you remind me of my denial phase of Apple products and how anyone ever want to buy close off crap like that. I didn't hate MP3 players or the early smartphones. Just Apple closed ecosystem crap. It thought me one thing to be more open to what most people actually want: convenience. And it drives everything. I want a robot to load my laundry. I programmed enough PLCs and industry software for a lifetime, to know that what can be automated had been automated. New stuff is usually regurgitation of what already has been done. There will be process optimisations and ML to find some more meaningful tasks and improvements. But the vast majority of current tasks simply can't be automated due to lack of scale. You need 1 robot or AI model to do 1000 different things. Not the other way around. It will get there whether you like it or not. Probably experiencing another bubbel when prime time is there. RemindMe! 10 years

But what about the prospect of being able to fuck the robot? Never underestimate humans desire to stick their dick in something.

Trying to use technology to solve social problems is a great way to create more and worse social problems. This should be obvious to anyone who even remotely follows world events.

This seems intuitively true. Humans are not that special at anything, but well designed to use tools to accomplish tasks in a better form. Reconstructing humans makes little sense when you can just build those tools to function without us. * We are not fast, but we can utilize a variety of devises to obtain greater speed. Building a self driving car (or other devise) makes more sense than building a robot capable of driving a standard car. * Robotic vacuums are far more practical than a humanoid robot capable of using a traditional vacuum. The benefit of the humanoid form is so that it can perform in a world designed around humans. This seems to offer no real advantage when more capable devises can be built to function in a specific need. Mast of none scenario.

The fact that the majority effort for a humanoid is on the like human moves, which don’t contribute to many tasks at all. Like the bipedal movement for most lifting and transporting tasks is not optimal. The only advantage for a humanoid is a multitask, full replacement model for a human, which is not optimized for almost all tasks in bigger scale. It will be cheaper and better to have a cooking robot, a cleaning robot, a floor sweeping robot, a lawnmower robot, separately than a humanoid robot who can’t effectively do anything other

And Honda has rockets that go up and land themselves.

I KNOW whose robots won't have lidar. Apparently humans have one sense, sight.

Neptune.

I'd go with six legs. Have a tripod base while moving half the legs at a time while walking. But your point absolutely stands. And give the robot lidar.

At minimum, broadly, if one is going to argue that humanoid robots as they are being sold can effortlessly “slot in” for human labor in the exact same domain… then *all* of the differences compared to a human have to be considered and justified. Because the pain-response is automatic, healthy adults take it for granted. But it does routinely prevent serious injury to a human body.

*Big, if true.* All joking aside, you’re right, look at the hype around the launch of his robotaxis. Quietly just said he needs more testing. It’s a house of cards.

A litmus test I've heard used is: "Can the Robot Make A Sandwich?" There's actually an enormous amount of dexterity required - things like opening the twist tie on bread or opening the wrapper on a slice of processed cheese. Even closing the plastic drawer in a refrigerator without causing it to bind requires some amount of human finesse. Can the robot spot mold on the bread? Smell that the ham has gone bad? If a magnet falls off the fridge, will it know or be able to pick it up? Can the robot close a bag of bread? Find the wrinkled "buy on" date to use the oldest bread first? Get the last bit of peanut butter out of a jar? Wash the empty jelly jar? If I tried hard enough, I could come up with several dozen "what ifs" for such a simple task. I'm gobsmacked that some people really believe personal humanoid robots will soon be available to purchase.

Sure. My point there, poorly articulated on my part perhaps, is that the “simply remove the human driver” hype papered over massive safety lifecycle development and maintenance complexities (costs). Seldom were these discussed in tech and tech media circles even to this day. And, indeed, companies like Waymo are still far from profitable. Not saying that they will not get there (safety lifecycle costs naturally decline), but that there are no guarantees and the path is quite complex.

A very under-appreciated point I suspect. Great observation.

lol no they absolutely do not

>Robotic vacuums are far more practical than a humanoid robot capable of using a traditional vacuum. This is the example I like to use, along with robotic lawnmowers. Walking robots (in bipedal or unsettling dog/spider-like form factors) definitely have a use-cases, but for domestic and factory/warehouse work where the environment is a lot more controlled a wheeled platform just makes a hell of a lot more sense. The bit I can't get around is that the obsession with humanoid robots just comes down to people wanting to own slaves again.

>You’ve put more thought into this than Musk has. You mean more than none?

Nvidia osmo is powering all of the humanoid robotics transformation. Not tesla although they have a ton more data to feed into the system than the other humanoid companies

Yes they do. A generalized humanoid is better as it's one bot for a house that can do many things, not a separate robot for each task of loading the dishwasher, putting the dishes away, dusting the entire house, putting groceries away, getting them from the car, walking the kids to the bus stop, cooking food, etc.

Did you not read the post about why a humanoid robot would be terrible at all of those things?

Blind people sometimes do little tongue clicks to help navigate via sonar

I did, and I disagree.

Toyota is a conglomerate. They make everything from healthcare products to sewing machines. They also have insurance company and they helped Japan to source ventilators and face-masks during covid.

The obsession with anything human-like is the same phenomenon driving the popularity of Chatgpt and the like. People are mesmerized by it, but it’s smoke and mirrors.

"Robots taking over nurses jobs" doesn't mean there would be zero nurses though. It means there can be 10 robots and 2 nurses, or whatever, with the nurses performing tasks only they can do and overseeing the robots. What machines do you think nurses use now that the profession didnt a hundred years ago and how much better are patients for it along with how much time and injuries have nurses saved? There are beds that automatically roll patients over, there are lifting devices, vital signs monitoring, electronic records, the list goes on

5. Robots are not bound by muscles. Human limbs for example are as they are, because muscles can only produce for by shortening. Pistons, motors, tracks etc. has a lot more variability and advantages. You almost never see biology immitated in mechanical engineering, because as optimized evolution is, it never invented the wheel.

Lol no shit; it’s a money grab for rubes

"Tesla nearly went bankrupt in 2019 in trying to fully automate their Fremont factory" I would like to know more, please provide some analysis or reporting. Thanks!

Perhaps the most educational post I've seen on reddit. Thanks for taking the time.

I've distractedly pondered the angle of sexbots aswell, but it makes no sense either.\ There is no way to recoup R&D costs and get to profitability that way.\ RealDolls has been a thing for a long time, but it has never taken off and gone mainstream. Even for couples that likes toys they are way to expensive. The cost would go way into five digits if you somehow could cram a robotics chassi in them. And like we mentioned earlier, humans are _the_ supreme species due to our ability to manipulate tools.\ Put it this way. Who the hell would want a sexbots with no tactile feedback and bad fine motor skills?

I do my kids laundry and they can’t even be bothered to take the laundry into the laundry room or into the dryer or put the clothes away once folded. What I’m saying that even with a fantasy robot that can fold cloths laid out in front of it there is still work to do. You have the do the prep and work after. Also - a specific folding clothes robot would probably be way cheaper and better than a generic do anything robot. This is the jack of all trades is a master of none scenario. A human robot makes no sense. It’s better to min / max cost and functionality with several robots instead of a single expensive and slow one.

Cool. I like the idea of several smaller robots each dedicated set of skills. And when the need comes they all come together to form a bigger robot like the... Thundercats

Robots could have lidar, but probably won’t. You don’t add sensors unless they are necessary. Since robots are an artificial construct, they are not limited to biological imperatives. If humans decide that a 7-armed robot would be useful for some specific task, they could certainly build one. Though most likely would not because of the unnecessary complications introduced. For a start symmetry is usually useful

The skepticism was the same because the word "robot" conjured up the mental picture of a 1950s sci-fi automaton, bounded by the same issues that still exist today. It was only after people realized that an industrial robot looks nothing like a human that the skepticism abated.

That's all great and all but can I fuck it?

Thanks for this extremely insightful perspective. I totaly agree. Nothing can outdo humans in “general-purposeness”.

I’m just for Tesla fan boy hate. Been in manufacturing all my life and you’re absolutely correct.

I’m just for Tesla fan boy hate. Been in manufacturing all my life and you’re absolutely correct.

This was covered years ago. Musk set up a very labor intensive line for the Model 3, and then ordered a ton of assembly robots with no plan for how to integrate them. It was in an early Munro video, before he got bought and became a Tesla sycophant.

I do not want the same robot that picks up dog crap to make my sandwich

Designing a humanoid robot that can do *anything* a human can do, and that you can just drop in place of a human around the household seems insane, liability wise. As you stated, robots in automated factories work because they are designed with a single task (or at best, very limited number of tasks) What Tesla is trying to do is an infinite number of tasks, many situations that they can’t even plan for. So many possibilities exist for that to go very wrong. No one knows what someone might try and have them do at home. There’s a video out there that some YouTuber got a robot and started kicking it and laughing and the robot started to cower away scared. What would happen if next he had it carrying dishes and it gets spooked (afraid it’s going to get kicked again) and drops glass all over the family. Or it starts to learn/train to be defensive and a kid comes into the house and it attacks a kid. Just one thing that comes to mind. Someone might have it open the front door for friends, then one day a thief shows up with a hat or glasses on and the robot lets him and then the family winds up murdered. Or someone ends up hacking into the robot So many “black-mirror” possibilities

Well, it’s it made by Tesla, what would stop Elon from flipping a switch so the robots take out those with opposing ideologies? Never trust shit that someone else holds the tether to.

Humans have several more senses as you should well know. (The traditional specified: Touch, Taste, Smell, Sound and Vision. But in fact multiple kinds of kinesthetic ‘touch’. (temperature difference, pressure, touch, and some others, like balance, acceleration)). Load/Strain, Limb Position.

Elon would want it if you could get it pregnant.

Adam has been ringing this gong here for a while… took a little break and popped back on. He’s active on Bluesky and perhaps other platforms I’m not using if you want to follow him. His old posts and comments are quite informative.

Thanks, will check them out.

Great post with a ton of good points. I think people get caught up in the idea that a humanoid robot is a great solution to every problem because it has the potential to do anything. However, as you pointed out, what's lacking is the requirement for a robot to have that flexibility in the vast majority of scenarios and having that flexibility inherently involves compromises in some other area. If you're going to have a machine at a static location there's a massive advantage in being able to just bolt it to the floor and end up a connection that's both stronger and lower maintenance than two feet will ever be. Especially for any process that requires a high degree of precision. I think a lot of people simply associate machinery and robotics as having that capability inherently but anyone with some background in it is aware there's always some degree of error and uncertainty that has to accounted for in some manner. Maybe it's wear on parts, maybe it's just some degree of skew that requires calibration, something caused by heat cycling, etc. Why on earth would any business pay tens of thousands of dollars for a humanoid robot to do that task to a significantly worse degree than a purpose designed robot would? In truth they wouldn't. This all a matter of margins, throughput and investment. A business will gladly spend twice as much for a task specific robot if it does 4x the work in a given period of time with a higher rate of reliability. I really like the point about downstream costs too. Factories are another place where you just can't throw in any machine that just kind of works. Even if you're talking about something like sorting recycling there's still humans involved because someone needs to make sure that stuff like fishing line and plastic bags don't make it through into the processing down the line. Why? Because everything else grinds to halt and a very expensive machine will break or get tangled up requiring hours of work to untangle or at worst an expensive replacement part and a trip from a high cost mechanical team from the manufacturer of said equipment. A humanoid robot might not just be inefficent or a bad investment but effectively create negative value and outright losses if it doesn't work as well as a human being does. Another big one I like to stress is that human biological design simply is not optimal for doing a lot of jobs and constraining any robotic or automated system to that model is usually a terrible idea. We've already seen Tesla specifically making the opposite argument with their existing attempts at self driving and completely ignoring the fact that driver already use additional sensors for everyday driving tasks beyond their own vision via things like backup cameras, cross traffic radar, TACC, parking assist and lane change warnings. Similar to how no sane engineer would design a modern airliner around the biology of a bird there's very little reason for the variety of engineers that make a modern robotics system work to constrain themselves to *limitations* of human biology. As an extension of the above there seems to be this belief that any automated system will naturally have to use the same set of tools that we do already to complete a task and there's somehow going to be an inherent savings by doing so. Why buy a robotic lawn mower when I can get Optimus to just use the old pull string one in my shed? Etc. In particular I think this ignores how many tooling systems already work and the advantages to better universal interfaces other than a robotic hand. Going back to yard tools do I need a robot with the complexity of a robotic hand or do I just opt for an arm with a good drive motor that can connect to existing systems like Milwaukee's Quik-lok? When you're talking about potentially purchasing a robot that is being touted at the $30k mark and is far more likely to cost 3x that there's a real question of how much value can be saved simply by having that simpler and easier to maintain system with a better universal interface. What's always kind of funny to me is that something like R2D2, a trash can with that apparently had the world's best universal interface, was in many ways a likely more practical design than a humanoid robot. I don't think people appreciate the number of alternatives that might be available in this space. Again, simply because able to make some trash can on wheels with a big battery, strong drive motor and good amount of computing power could easily end up being a superior design. People like to say "well what about stairs?" okay what about the? What do we do in homes for people who cannot walk but need to get up a staircase? Or shopping carts that need to move between floors? We essentially just mount a rail to a wall so that a far simpler mechanism can move a substantial amount of weight up to another flat plane. Granted it's not seamless and sexy but it'll almost certainly be a hell of a lot cheaper and more reliable than a bipedal robot when it comes to overall implementation cost and complexity. People just love this idea of a robotic swiss army knife without realizing that it'll probably perform about as well and be about as convenient to use as an actual swiss army knife for a specific task in most cases. Most of this isn't coming from a point of sound engineering but of marketing, hype and Hollywood portrayals of what the future might look like.

Yes, think we're all aware. Edolf however...

It's just a stock pumping scam. 99% of what Musk does is just stock pumping scams people.

I like my robots bolted to the floor thank you very much.

It was right before they went into 'production hell's and had people making cars in the parking lot. Leon thought he could have a factory with no humans. Then realized he needs humans to do the little things machines can't. I wish I had a reference but I remember it well when I was following it back then sort of wondering if it could work

Upvote cuz I agree with u in theory.. in practice, they'd need to be able to sufficiently do those things,.and then someone would need to pay for and train and maintain them to do those things. Would you pay 100+k to preserve some Japanese finger banging?

Bro it takes less than a minute to throw your clothes in the washer and hit a button. The washing machine already is the robot.. why pay 100k for something you could just make your wife do?

I've read before that Tesla can't properly engineer the necessary actuators for the robotic development? I do not think it will ever be a real thing?

Tracks man! Just make all the legs and arms interchangeable!  Get different attachments for your robot!

Preaching to the choir, try this on r/tslastockholders

2. “What’s to stop me from strip mining the research from humanoid robots and applying it to traditional robotics that are currently on the market?” I think current method is to use an Apple Vision Pro to match the humanoid 1 to 1 with a human counterpart so I’m not sure it’s workable with purpose built robots. You also need to grow a fleet of identical robots so that knowledge can be shared among them. 4. Figure is currently working at the speed of a human on the package sorting job which is typically done by humans. They estimate it’ll be much faster than a human in the next 6 months to year since it’s currently being slowed down by software.

>2. “What’s to stop me from strip mining the research from humanoid robots and applying it to traditional robotics that are currently on the market?” I think current method is to use an Apple Vision Pro to match the humanoid 1 to 1 with a human counterpart so I’m not sure it’s workable with purpose built robots. You also need to grow a fleet of the same robots so that knowledge can be shared among them. It’s by collecting tons of data on a single type of robot that they can do it. Cannot be a 1-to-1 because Figure's robot is considerably different (deficient) than the capabilities of a human. So those systems-level discrepancies need to be reconciled. What I was referring to in that point was any ML or machine vision enhancements that could enhance an already-mature traditional automation market - and bypassing any unnecessary complexity additions that humanoid robotics yield. Another inconsistency that I hear often in this space, when the startups are pressed, is that an open-ended robotics integration effort is required in a pilot phase. Those costs are also significant. >4. Figure is currently working at the speed of a human on the package sorting job which is typically done by humans. They estimate it’ll be much faster than a human in the next 6 months to year since it’s currently being slowed down by software. I am assuming that you are referring to this video that Figure put out recently: [https://www.figure.ai/news/scaling-helix-logistics](https://www.figure.ai/news/scaling-helix-logistics) Immediately strikes me as incredibly inefficient. Highly-performant sorting equipment already exists for this exact application that is far less complex and, very likely, even has a significantly-lower upfront cost. So the total lifecycle costs almost certainly won't pencil out. Frankly, this just looks like "make work" for the cameras. My advice to Figure is to, at the very least, identify an application where it is conceivable that a humanoid robot brings unique automation benefits. I definitely do not see that here. >I think the big draw of humanoids could be that they are continuously improving across jobs, not just within a single job. Then so can traditional robotics - with, perhaps, advancements in ML and machine vision. And traditional robotics can be highly-flexible - both in terms of application and re-deployment. I think that we also have to define "improving" and what that workflow looks like - especially in a factory setting.

Edolf ?

> You're better off either with wheels or with 4 legs. Former immediately fails in any environment that has a non-level surface (I don't mean to denigrate you, but it seems like whenever the topic of humanoids comes up, suddenly stairs, cracks, unlevel grounds, etc just *don't exist anymore* to everyone saying 'wheels!' or 'tracks!') The latter is fine, but I feel that people have this almost smug "There's *no* reason to ever use humanoids!" Really? There's not a *single reason* you can think of why a world largely designed *around bipedal humans* that typically stand around 5 to 6 feet tall navigating a variety of environments might make investing in legged humanoids worth it? Sure it's not the *most efficient* way of locomotion, but that leads into: Another devil's advocate being: which one do you think the market would go for? If *I* had a choice, I'd go with the bipedal humanoid personally, and I feel many feel the same way. It's just a matter of "it'll wind up coming around regardless, even if there are technically better options." Now if you're talking about *industrial* robots, then obviously humanoids are the biggest load of crock. It's honestly for the best ***humans*** don't do industrial jobs, let alone humanoid robots.

I do feel people underestimate how much the human bodyplan appeals to humans. People remember Pepper; virtually no one remembers Cozmo or Jibo. The cold fact is that humanoids *will* be brute forced into the mainstream, and a major reason why is just because people *want* them. After all, we already literally have home robots *right now* in the form of Roombas, dishwashers, programmable fans, but I could make a billion bucks in a week if I was able to conjure a general-purpose humanoid robot and sell it for $20k. It's just a market that'll *eventually* get filled for better or worse, no matter how many times people say they can't work. And that's what Musk is trying (in vain) to jump on. Industrial robots, here's the thing: there's no need for industrial robots to be anything other than nodes of a giant mechanical cell. The ideal industrial robot would be more like mechanical organelles, in a giant factory redesigned wholesale to never require the inefficiencies that warrant human spatial design in the first place. Or perhaps more accurately, the entire factory *would be the robot*. So humanoids for *industry* is a scam. That's what appeals to the classic image of the men in overalls and hardhats hammering and pulling vague objects in an industrial setting, except those men are made of carbon fiber and steel with glowing red eyes. And that's the crux as well. It reminds me of the debate about xenobiology and how it's utterly impossible for any aliens to look like humans, as if the human bodyplan was just a total fluke, and thus treating the concept of humanoid aliens as if they're either the *only* kinds of aliens that exist or can't exist at all. When you'd think it would be obvious that humanoids are just one bodyplan, one that tends to be great for general-purpose activity and tool manipulation, but even then isn't a surefire path to general intelligence, and arose due to specific conditions (but counterintuitively we've seen how said conditions can reemerge to allow for convergent evolution, and it's not like humans simply sprung from the ether randomly 200,000 years ago). And also is maybe 0.0001% of the entirety of life on Earth. I dunno, it just comes across as coming from a place of misanthropy more than anything. Same here: there's no doubt in my mind we'll see humanoids, but only when the AI needed to make good use of it is available (otherwise ASIMO 25 years ago would be in every middle class home). But I don't get the mentality that this somehow means there will be no robots of any other kind, or that said robotic demographics would be overwhelmingly dominated by humanoids. The main reason they never took off is because the humanoid bodyplan really only works *with* general intelligence (imagine a human with the brain plasticity of, say, a peregrine or turtle) and we don't have artificial general intelligence— personally, I think we could, even relatively soon, if and only if the hysteria for attention-based transformers dies out and we start pursuing neurosymbolic-tree search hybrids that utilize transformers as one part of a much more generalist whole, but so far only DeepMind is doing anything remotely like that. So it makes little sense trying to argue "this does/doesn't work" when it relies on a technology we don't even have yet. From an engineering perspective, they're a disaster for sure, because we're essentially basing their potential off of existing computational power, AI control methods, battery energy density, and the limitations thereof. Without general intelligence, humanoids make no sense, and robotics in general have limited utility to begin with just because of the inability to handle chaos, hence why special purpose robots are superior when we only have narrow/special purpose AI. Tesla has never been above lying about their capabilities. Or perhaps that's more Musk himself. How long have we had "Full Self Driving" (aka Level 2 autonomy, which is almost dangerous in how it is sometimes capable but is actually extremely brittle and disarms you if you think it's anything more than fancy autonomous lane assist and extremely limited autonomous driving). He'll keep blowing as much money as he wants trying to bring The Future™ to life in his own way just to score the cred of being the guy that did it, even if literally every engineer and data scientist is telling him he's as wrong as humanly possible with his approach. Even *that* factors in, because if it somehow magically *did* work, he'd then be able to market himself as the misunderstood genius who was right when the ""experts"" were wrong. Despite the fact said experts are saying "you need to turn the stove on to boil the water, not keep filling the pot with more water."

Are you telling me the stripped down version won't have temp sensors? The nurse version will have to have them in the fingers for anal temp readings. And to the OP: One trick robotics (handling just 1 type of material) is in most manufacturing. Could you easily build, lets say a dish washing robot that deals with pots, dishes and drink glasses?

There will always be a need for overseer's.

Great post - I'd summarize as saying there is no clear use case for the humanoid robot given their capabilities and costs.

So many of the big Japanese and Korean companies build pretty much everything. Mitsubishi? Submarine or AC unit. Honda? Family car or private jet. Hitachi? Massage stick or power plant. Samsung? Small phones or automatic killer robots. Hyundai? Elevators or large ocean going ships.

what exactly are the use cases for a bipedal robot?

Adam, nice to see you post here again. You and I have often disagreed over the years, but always done so respectfully and I've learned a lot from you. cheers sir

I am 55 years old and I still cannot close a bag of bread.... I too am incredulous that so many think we will be living with an Optimus in the next few years. It's also laughable to think that Tesla can deliver a well functioning humanoid robot to market for under $30k. Wish I could place a bet on that one

Oh hey! Always disagreed respectfully, though. And a cheer to you to!

I've always wondered about the feasibility of wheels on legs ala tachikomas.

Wrong in every way.

A friend of mine is an aeronautical engineer and he was hired by a start up to develop a drone. The founder/CEO required the drone to be shaped like one of the star wars ships. My friend just said it didn't make any sense because the design had a lot of drag and it wouldn't be feasible for the mission. My friend quit the job. Some CEOs and some investors have impractical ideas!

Why was the iphone a massive success? Was it because it was the best at making calls? The best at playing music? It was the best and doing many things, in one product

I mean they have robots in the medical field in Japan. The thing is they are marketing these all wrong. Sell it as a bot that does all the tasks people hate like mowing, doing laundry, dishes etc ..

Counterpoint, sexbots.

I would absolutely pay 20k for a robot that is able to clean, do the dishes and tidy somewhat reliably. And by that I don't mean today's robot vacuums and a dishwasher. I want it to use a proper strength vacuum, clean the table, stack and unstack the dishwasher, do the hand washing, and maybe hang the clothes washing on the line too. All of that requires decent dexterity, but doesn't really require legs apart from if it also has to go up and down stairs. Even then alternatives are possible.

Humanoid robots are in a large part “reinventing the wheel” Elon is really not much of a tech visionary when all his ideas are just “let’s copy human biology” (bipedal robots, vision only FSD) Peter Thiel just recently really destroyed Elon’s humanoid robot thesis by pointing out if we end up having all these humanoid robots, then the economic growth would pay for the deficit he’s so worried about.

Why would I pay for a specialize design when I could just buy a general purpose robot that I can assign a varied number of tasks?

How well can this robot nurse recognize a bad stick. I know a now retired nurse that could feel a bad vein before it bloomed. That’s not teachable. That’s forty years of experience

It would take much longer than 4 years. If and when there are robots that can effectively do house chores like clean, laundry etc, then obviously people will want to have one. But we are very far from these capabilities. First, the robot would need to be able to move autonomously and safely within your home, and then actually do chores reliably (that is, without you having to “supervise” it and clean after it). Show me a single robot that can do that now - don’t bother, there aren’t any. It will be possible one day, but it could be decades until the technology is developed and tested. Even just moving safely and effectively within your home is not something that exists today.

To quote my professor "if a robot moves it's head it's only for investors"

Start with sexbots. The technology should improve rapidly as money and expertise...er, pour in.

If your goal is to make lifelike simulations of past presidents, industrial robots would greatly disappoint the audience.

Good points but I want one anyway if it can do the laundry, vacuum and do the windows. Sure a full humanoid is overkill, but what’s a little overkill if it can do the windows?

Something that can be very heavily automated with robotics should be seen as one organism IMO. Don’t add complexity at points where it’s not required.

The elephant in the room: just assume They could perfect the humanoid robot hardware and sensor suits. They will never achieve an generalist autonomous integrated system by using machine vision learning and any sensor suit. They haven't gotten close with cars. Tesla expects this to be the mechanism that learns the environment. Never happening.

You should know that the cost of a humanoid robot is still very high for small shops. Most people cannot afford a machine that costs fifty thousand dollars. It is much safer to buy a used industrial arm that is very reliable. This is a very good point about the real costs of complex new technology.

I believe that human labor will stay better than a humanoid robot for a long time. Our hands can feel things and move in ways that motors cannot match. It is a very big challenge to build a robot that is as smart as a person. We should value real human work much more than machines.

I suggest that safety is the biggest problem for the humanoid robot in our homes. If a heavy metal machine falls on a child, it could be very bad. We do not have good ways to stop this from happening yet. It is a very scary thought for many families who want a helper bot.

I think that the hype for the humanoid robot is just like the self driving car bubble. People promise too much and then the reality is very disappointing and slow. We need robots that solve real problems without being too fancy or expensive. It is a very honest and grounded way to look at the future now.