Are humanoid robots all hype?

Recently, agility robotics announced an expanded partnership with Amazon warehouses to trial their bi-pedal humanoid robot Digit. This humanoid robot has the promise of replacing warehouse workers and taking movement tasks over:

Agility robotics demonstration

Robots are known for their jobs in automating dull, dirty and dangerous jobs. While warehouse jobs are not life threatening, they still are dangerous with high injury rates due to the repetitive motions:

Chart: Amazon Warehouse Injuries Far Above Average | Statista
Amazon warehouse danger


Additionally, Tesla continues work on Tesla Bot, which Elon Musk has been quoted as projecting will be worth more than the entirety of the tesla’s car sales:

Tesla Optimus Bot

In short term, humanoid robots such as Agilitiy’s Digit and tesla’s Optimus are all hype and technical learning projects. Future generations will become cost effective, more computationally efficient and complex with less sensor error, and truly live up to the hype. Other companies such as Boston dynamics and figure ai continue to make technological progress on a successful humanoid robot.

For now, we should expect to see more use-case form factor specific robots, as there is no point in limiting the efficiency of a machine by mocking the human bipedal approach, such as Boston’s spot robot, drones, food delivery robots among others.

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