I agree, and indeed, these automated warehouses have been in use for a long time, and there doesn’t seem to be a need for a human-like robot there. It’s a bit like using a humanoid robot in the driver’s seat instead of Tesla’s FSD.
There will surely be use cases for these humanoid robots as well, but in terms of efficiency, it’s difficult for them to compete with a robot or machine specifically developed for a particular task.
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Certainly, a specialized shelving robot in an automated warehouse is more efficient and better. But the whole point of a humanoid robot is that it can perform human tasks. About 80% of all warehousing is still manual labor.
And you still can’t tell that shelving robot to clean the aisles, repackage goods, etc.
When you consider how large the cost of grocery retail shelving, picking, and cleaning is alone in Finland, for instance, there’s already a massive opportunity here.
And yes, a robot specifically developed for floor cleaning is certainly more efficient at that task. But how is that robot going to dust tables and clean the toilets? The turnover of the cleaning industry in Finland alone is a business worth approximately 2.3 BILLION EUROS. By the way, quite a few pairs of hands are dusting right at this very moment. If, for instance, 20% of that work could be shifted to humanoid robots, the global demand would be absolutely massive.
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There is definitely a demand for restroom cleaning robots; at airports, for instance, such a device would be very useful. However, I believe they would move on wheels for the sake of both cost-effectiveness and efficiency. There is surely a use for robotic arms in cleaning, but moving on legs is unlikely to offer any benefit.
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Hey, that toilet cleaning robot shouldn’t move on wheels. How is it going to move between floors if it’s on wheels? By elevator? How does it press the button for the right floor? When you think about it a bit, you realize how the infrastructure is perfect for a human-sized mover. Furthermore, that humanoid cleaner robot can empty trash cans (put a new bag in the bin), dust, and do everything a human version does. The possibilities are endless. If AI can already drive a car (coast to coast), you’d think it would also be possible to train a robot to perform a significant portion of the physical tasks humans do.
Until you have to climb stairs or ladders or get into a car or…
It’s obvious that the humanoid form has advantages, not least in how the robot’s brain is developed. Once the brain is solved, adding wheels to the legs or in place of legs, or suction cups to the wrists, or whatever, is a fairly trivial task.
Exactly, calling an elevator and selecting the floor from the buttons is still beyond a robot’s capabilities, but otherwise, the robot is already capable of replacing a human in cleaning tasks.
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Is there a video of that? I mean, one where a robot, for example, tidies up, dusts, vacuums… Teaching standard functions in a fixed environment isn’t particularly impressive yet, as you should be able to tell the robot verbally and, if necessary, show it once, after which it should be able to clean just like a human cleaner.
I don’t mean to be rude… but you should really visit some warehouses and factories…
You should watch, for example, Lauri Vuohensilta’s coin tossing and think whether something on wheels with a couple of long “trunks” (robotic arms) would actually be better and faster at loading stuff…
In the industry, you see really great solutions that can’t be matched by a human clone in any way… humans are quite a failed creation for many jobs…
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One of humanity’s most significant inventions was the wheel. Since then, almost all mobile devices have primarily been built on wheels. If a legged vehicle were more efficient, Musk would have designed his Tesla with legs instead of wheels.
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Ouch. As someone responsible for warehousing in the Finnish industry, that stung a little. I have indeed visited many warehouses, and automated picking, shelving, or packing are not yet in very widespread use. I have also seen how e-commerce packages are packed in a large portion of SMEs, and the level of automation isn’t very high in those either. We don’t have storage systems that can be customized for a company the size of a single Motonet department store; instead, there are usually 1-2 people working there shelving/packing and shipping e-commerce orders. Of course, postal services and other large operators have increasingly moved towards automation, but you would probably be surprised how much goods still move purely by human power.
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The wheel is definitely impressive. Though Musk seems to be focusing more on those legged products now and is converting wheeled lines to legged models. 
Specialized robots will, I believe, be a tough competitor to humanoid models for a long time. No matter how cute they are.
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It’s probably been mentioned a few times, but a humanoid robot doesn’t primarily compete with, say, an industrial robot serving a lathe; instead, it mainly threatens to take the job of the person pushing blanks on a pallet to that industrial robot. And then it goes and inventories the warehouse. During a “coffee break,” it organizes tools and orders new ones to replace worn-out ones directly. It welds a couple of assemblies where the welding positions would be absolutely insane for a human and writes quality reports on the machined shafts directly into the ERP. A few photos/videos of the products being delivered to the customer when necessary. When the office staff leaves for the day, the robot climbs the stairs—since there happens to be no elevator in this 70s tin-clad building—and goes to clean the desks. Wireless charging at workstations or swapping their own batteries, and an army of these fellows runs 24/7, boosting productivity into the stratosphere.
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This is an interesting list, and I believe Tesla can develop these robots and create a market for them. On the other hand, I am slightly skeptical about how the robot will ultimately handle these tasks right now and on what schedule learning new tasks will occur.
Additionally, practically every one of these examples is one where the robot has to perform a surprisingly demanding task. Perhaps the most striking to me was the one you mentioned: pushing blanks to industrial robots. A routine and boring task, but is it really? Many tasks in factories are surprisingly complex (at least if the job description is expanded slightly) and varied, requiring a lot of tacit knowledge. My own experience, having seen a few factories, is that warehouse tasks, among others, are surprisingly demanding. For example, palletizing, stacking goods on a pallet, placing the pallet label—and always exactly on the right pallet—wrapping the pallets in film, strapping, and moving them from place to place is in some parts at quite a primitive level in companies. Furthermore, it’s often handled by a single warehouse worker, and if they aren’t there, the job stops right there or is done as expensive overtime.
Regarding my faith in the future of Tesla’s robots, I’m not for or against—based on everything I’ve seen, rather the opposite. I would very much like them to succeed, but outside of Tesla’s factories, there may be a surprisingly steep learning curve ahead.
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The best use case for humanoid robots is as professional athletes. All sports, from football and ice hockey to basketball and baseball, can easily be taught to humanoid robots. In any sport, the mechanics are quite straightforward. Robots are superior in speed, strength, jumping, etc. Furthermore, robots can have 360-degree vision and process information continuously without their brains getting tired.
They can be recharged during intermissions or shifts, so the short operating time—which is a drawback for humanoid robots in other fields of work—would not be an issue.
There are dozens of sports clubs in the world with team values exceeding $1B, and thousands of smaller ones worth over $M. Additionally, every year players are bought/traded for at least hundreds of $M, so the turnover for robot manufacturing would be stable and very high.
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How do you view the valuation in a sport where all participants are bland, characterless, and possess the exact same characteristics?
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I don’t believe in Musk’s visions at all (even with the proverbial grain of salt). SpaceX’s mission to colonize Mars is silly, to say the least. Instead, hauling cargo into orbit is a trillion-dollar business, and in that, SpaceX is number one. Humanoid robots are also some kind of romantic vision. Robots exist and will come in various forms, but in the near future, they won’t have legs on a large scale. A human-shaped robot with human faces loses quite a bit of productivity compared to an optimized solution.
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Quite the opposite. Sports clubs wouldn’t be worth billions if humanoid robots replaced athletes. This argument completely fails to understand where the cash flows of sports clubs come from and what makes people follow sports. It is precisely those individuals who are exceptionally good at their sports—not robots capable of a theoretically perfect performance.
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A humanoid robot is not intended to be the most efficient solution for restocking, but rather to create a sense of security for people shopping in the store while the restocking takes place. If some “tentacle box” is moving around in the aisle, the customer’s mind won’t be at ease because the movements are efficient, but unfamiliar.
Of course, a humanoid robot could twist its limbs in any which way and move unexpectedly, but these should be avoided so that people do not become anxious.
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Who would watch sports between robots? Computers have been better than humans at chess for 30 years, but no one is interested in chess between computers. And a floor jack beats the world’s best powerlifters, but who would be interested in watching which robot lifts the most iron?
And as for wheels, it is by far the most efficient way to move a humanoid robot. A robot can be capable of walking stairs and still move on wheels. It makes no sense for robots to have two large feet when they could have wheels in their place that can also be used for walking. Or wheels on the soles of the feet, and the robot’s speed and energy efficiency will multiply.
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Irony is certainly a difficult art on discussion forums. I don’t know what the original author meant with their comment about humanoid robots and professional athletes, but I at least read it as clear-as-day irony.
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