We are in the midst of a very large experiment driven mostly by automobile manufacturers and distribution warehouses. We are talking about whether or not bipedal humanoid robots coupled with AI can take over a significant amount of the repetitive tasks in these industrial environments.

We’re in the “guineapig “phase where different companies are installing small groups of these robots and then seeing how cost-effective they are in that environment. One of the most recent experiments took place in the Spartanburg, SC assembly plant for BMW. The robots were supplied by Figure AI with their Figure 02 model which had the following attributes.

• 4th Generation Hands with 16 D.O.F
• Carrying Weight 25 kg
• AI Driven Vision with 6 RGB Cameras

• 3X the computing Power of the previous generation
• Onboard AI Inference engine

• Visual Language Model
• Speech to Speech Reasoning

• 2.25KWh / >50% Runtime

• 100% Autonomous
• Neural Network Learned Placement
• Self-Correcting Learned Behavior

For today’s robot this specification (although somewhat limited in detail) suggests a humanoid of moderate size. The power consumption listed is about 10% of the power used by an average house over the course of a day.

Aside from the Figure 02 robot tested for BMW on their assembly line, Boston Dynamics has a testing agreement with Hyundai and Tesla, and of course has Tesla-designed robots with actuators for their own design.

The race to design and build the most human-like of robots is a hedge against future labor shortages. Having human-like flexibility, others see humanoids as a way to add flexibility to their processes at a reasonable cost. The economics of humanoid robots, means they won’t likely replace complex and dedicated robotics (like a chassis welding automotive robot for example). But having robots doing repetitive and boring tasks that are not well suited to humans, may be a self-fulfilling prophecy: certain undesirable tasks automatically go to humanoid robots. At the rate that humanoid robots are progressing, we’ll have the answers soon. The future is closer than we can imagine.