Famed roboticist says humanoid robot bubble is doomed to burst

Renowned roboticist Rodney Brooks has a wake-up call for investors pouring billions into humanoid robot startups: you’re wasting your money.

Brooks, who co-founded iRobot and spent decades at MIT, is particularly skeptical of companies like Tesla and Figure trying to teach robots dexterity by showing them videos of humans doing tasks. In a new essay, he calls this approach “pure fantasy thinking.”

The problem? Human hands are incredibly sophisticated, packed with about 17,000 specialized touch receptors that no robot comes close to matching. While machine learning transformed speech recognition and image processing, those breakthroughs built on decades of existing technology for capturing the right data. “We don’t have such a tradition for touch data,” Brooks points out.

Then there’s safety. Full-sized walking humanoid robots pump massive amounts of energy into staying upright. When they fall, they’re dangerous. Physics means a robot twice the size of today’s models would pack eight times the harmful energy.

Brooks predicts that in 15 years, successful “humanoid” robots will actually have wheels, multiple arms, and specialized sensors and abandon the human form. Meanwhile, he’s thoroughly convinced that today’s billions are funding expensive training experiments that will never scale to mass production.