Investor Warning: Billions Flowing into Humanoid Robot Projects Make Rodney Brooks Skeptical

Rodney Brooks, the visionary robotics expert and co-founder of iRobot, strongly warns investors against investing billions in start-ups developing humanoid robots. In his view, such investments are anything but sensible. Brooks is particularly skeptical of companies like Tesla and Figure, which aim to teach their robots dexterity using video footage of human activities—a method he calls "pure fantasy." The main issue lies in the complexity of the human hand, equipped with about 17,000 specialized tactile sensors—a sophistication that no current robot even comes close to achieving. While machine learning has revolutionized the recognition of speech and images, these advances were based on decades of existing technology for data collection. "For tactile sensing, we lack such a tradition," Brooks critically notes. Additionally, safety presents one of the biggest stumbling blocks. Human-sized robots consume substantial energy to remain upright and pose a significant risk when they fall. According to physics, a robot twice the size carries eight times more dangerous energy. Brooks predicts that successful "humanoid" robots in 15 years will more likely have wheels, multiple arms, and specialized sensors, completely abandoning the human form. Meanwhile, he regards the current billion-dollar funding activities as expensive experiments with little chance of transitioning to economical mass production.