Nio's car factory in China introduces UBTech's new humanoid robots, capable of performing complex manufacturing tasks and replacing human workers in a variety of tasks. And they are not the only ones employing humanoid robots
If you arrive at the Nio car factory in China, you may be confused and think you are visiting the future. Next to the traditional production line reserved for cars, you will see humanoid robots: with two legs, two arms and a head. they Each vehicle is inspected strictly, and perform the tasks that until now were reserved for human employees: making sure that the seat belt is properly installed, sticking the vehicle emblem on the front with a high level of precision, filling oil as required and much more.
And in the robot revolution, you can be sure Walker won't be alone in the factories. or at all.
A bustling market
In August 2021, Tesla celebrated its "Artificial Intelligence Day" in an unusual way. Many journalists were invited to the event, and watched with wide eyes as Tesla's next robot took the stage. He looks terrifyingly human - just like a man in a robot suit. The robot slowly walked up the stairs to the stage, stood in front of the audience, and then began to dance. This was no ordinary robot dance - clumsy and slow. Tesla's robot danced freely and fast, putting all other robots in the world to shame.
Luckily for the other robots, it was really a man in a suit, the product of the world's richest man's sense of humor. Musk banished the humanoid robot from the stage, then laid out his vision for real humanoid robots made by Tesla that could do all kinds of work, including in Tesla's own car manufacturing plant.
"I think that especially in the future, physical work will be a choice. If you want to do it, you can, but you don't have to do it." Musk predicted.
the journalists killed The bizarre show. The headlines in the newspapers… well, they didn't really appear. The prevailing discourse was that it was not even a prototype of an idea, but rather a prototype that would emerge one day. But Musk did not give up. Just eight months after the man-in-the-robot-suit, Tesla introduced the “OptimusHers: a humanoid robot that was very similar in appearance to the demonstration from 2021. A year and a half later, at the end of 2023, the company updated that it had already released the 2nd generation of Optimus. The new generation knew go, cook an egg and even dance.
Shortly after, in June 2024, Tesla announced that Optimus Generation 2 was already working in its factories. Another factory that is starting to get humanoid robots.
And Tesla, like UBTech, is not alone in this market. Today everyone is trying to bring different and different humanoid robots to the market. I will not tell about the strangest ones here, because children read this record. Luckily, even the less weird robots are still interesting.
Estribot is developing a robot that is already capable - in real time and without remote control - of folding and ironing laundry, pouring a glass of wine and even pulling the tablecloth from under the dinnerware without these falling. At least in the attempt shown in the video they released in May 2024. The company Figure is also developing a humanoid robot, And beside her too Boston Dynamics, the American Agility and Aptronic, the Chinese Unitary, the Canadian Sanctuary AI, the Norwegian 1X and the Singaporean Poria.
This is a very different situation from a decade ago, when only one company dominated the humanoid robot market with genius: Boston Dynamics. Now Boston Dynamics already feels the other runners in the marathon around it, although there is no doubt that it is still the most successful in producing promotional videos for its robots. In recent years, Boston Dynamics has produced videos in which its robots are seen dancing, arresting criminals, tidying up the garden and receiving kicks from humans.
In short, videos are very similar to those that all the companies I mentioned so far produce today. And not just videos. If you want to purchase one of these robots to have a partner for dance lessons, I recommend one of the cheaper ones: Unitary's G1, At a cost of only 16,000 dollars. It may sound like a lot in absolute terms, but this robot is much cheaper than most used cars. Just good luck importing it from China.
Which brings us to the question, where did this big jump in the capabilities of robots come from, along with the decrease in costs?
Where did the big jump come from?
How did it happen that nowadays everyone is suddenly trying to produce humanoid robots?
It's hard to find just one answer. Obviously, there has been progress in materials engineering, so that we have lighter and stronger materials - and those that can also be obtained at lower prices. Computing capabilities have also leapt forward, so that any relatively small company is able to start fielding its own robot, which can run the complex information processing required to control its legs and arms. And so are the sensor technologies, batteries and simulations required to teach the robot to walk before it is even built.
All of this is true, but I would like to add one more product that joined the market in the last two years and is also responsible for leapfrogging the capabilities of the robots forward: ChatGPT.
Well, not really ChatGPT, but the underlying technology: large language models. The most sophisticated of them today are able to receive a picture or a video, and extract information and insights from them in human language. In demonstrations of robots today you can already see How the world looks from the eyes of the robot: He takes pictures of his surroundings, then asks the big language model - "What do I see here?" "Where should you put the forks and knives?" "Which of the spices is particularly suitable for chicken soup?"
This means that even a child can today develop a basic robot that is able to understand the world better than the most sophisticated robots of five years ago. Of course, that same child would also need a team of engineers to turn the basic robot into a machine that can walk and dance - and that's how the new companies we know today were founded and are behind some of the most advanced humanoid robots. And unless there is a surprising change for the worse, we can expect that more companies will be established, more robots will appear on YouTube, and prices will continue to fall.
The world, in short, will be filled with robots.
The billion on the way
The banking company Goldman Sachs is known for the annual forecasts it provides about the potential inherent in various areas of the economy. The company has been analyzing the markets for many years, and its analysts know and are also ready to look back and put their finger on innovations and developments that surprised them and caused them to change their opinions.
The company devoted an entire report to one of these surprising innovations at the beginning of 2024:Humanoid Robot: The Accelerating Artificial Intelligence". In the report, the researchers admit that the pace of developments in the field of humanoid robots in the last year alone surprised them greatly. Thus, for example, the production cost of a humanoid robot dropped between 2023 and 2024 by approximately forty percent. I repeat: within one year, production costs were reduced by almost half. Even the most optimistic analysts at Goldman Sachs believed that production costs had fallen by only twenty percent. And suddenly, a surprise. And they expect prices to only continue to drop.
The researchers were also surprised by the advanced capabilities of the robots already in 2024, and determined that the robots can already reach the factories. And when will the humanoid robots arrive in our homes? Sometime between 2028 and 2031. That is, four more years from now. And this forecast also replaces the forecast from only one year ago, according to which the robots will reach homes only between 2030 and 2035.
How many humanoid robots will we get to see in the coming years? Goldman Sachs provides a forecast that still seems conservative to me. They believe that the demand for humanoid robots will be around 3.5 million units, assuming they are reserved only for dangerous, boring or other tasks that humans simply do not want to do. This forecast, I repeat, is quite conservative. When a technology begins to develop rapidly, it can easily invade new and different areas. Is it really so exaggerated to think that a family will pay ten thousand shekels for a robot in ten years, so that it will always keep the house clean, feed the cat, go for walks with the dog and pick up the children from school? And if these capabilities sound far-fetched - well, there is no reason why we won't be able to realize them in the coming years, if technology continues to develop at the same rate as today.
If we think of the humanoid robots as machines capable of doing everything a human can do, it is clear that the real market for them is much larger than what Goldman Sachs predicts. In fact, it is possible that another extreme prediction could be more correct: by 2040, there will be about a billion human-like robots on earth. This is it The forecast that Elon Musk supports. Its meaning is that in about 15 years, for every ten people in the world there will also be one human-like robot that will assist them in... everything.
What could such a world look like?
A world of robots
If we rely on the predictions of Goldman Sachs, then in five years from today we will start to see humanoid robots in homes, on the streets and even in businesses. In the beginning, their capabilities will still be very limited and very vertical-oriented. That is, they will focus on one specific area, and will not deviate from it. The house robots will clean the house. The robots in the streets will make deliveries. The robots in the businesses will sell ice cream and toys.
In those early years, the robots would also tend to break down and require replacement of parts at a high rate. Because of this, not only will their initial price be relatively high, but they will also require frequent repairs. The meaning will be that the robots will find their place mainly in the businesses, where the managers will be able to justify the high cost. The robots, after all, will be able to take the place of human workers, thus saving the business owner several salaries.
As time progresses, the robots will become more durable, and institutions will develop around them that will be able to provide them with quick and cheap repairs. The most sophisticated robots will even be able to repair themselves, at least in the simpler cases of breakdowns. At this point, the robots will also begin to reach more and more nursing homes, where they will provide a wide range of services. Very broad, in fact, as the humanoid robots will become a platform, rather than a specialized product in its own right.
What is meant by platform? Think about the iPhone. At the beginning, it was only a specialized product: a colorful and impressive phone, with a limited number of additional uses, such as a camera, calculator and a few other basic applications. It didn't take long before Steve Jobs understood the importance of the app store, which allowed the iPhone to become a platform: a tool on which any application could be run. And so the iPhone became a multi-purpose tool, whose main use today is as a computer, and only occasionally we also use it to call others.
When the robotic platforms become common enough, the 'apps' for them will also appear. Each such application will provide the robot with expertise in a different field, so that it can perform some complex task. The humanoid robot in my house will be able to turn into a handyman – sorry, handyrobot – and use a drill to install a shelf. He could become a plumber and disassemble and reassemble the plumbing. He will be able to become a perfect babysitter and take care of the children. In a real emergency, and through pirated apps, it could even provide medical services. Yes, real surgeries too.
If this all sounds fantastic to you, well, you're right. These things will not happen immediately. It will be a gradual process that will last decades, during which the human-like robots will become an obvious part of our daily routine, and their capabilities will develop at the same time. And all this, of course, only on the assumption that technology will continue to develop at a good pace, and without major wars or disasters that will stop the technological race. In this period it is more difficult than ever to know if this will really be the case. But you can hope!
Let's keep our fingers crossed, then, for humanoid robots. We are currently in that exciting time where our expectations of artificial intelligence and robots are proving to be conservative and flightless every year. The field of humanoid robots is gaining momentum and flying forward at a pace that leaves our predictions from last year far behind. Where will we end up at the end of the race?
The answer, as usual, we will find out in the future.
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