Humanoid robots are coming. Eventually?

This is The Stepback, a play newsletter breaking down 1 basal communicative from the tech world. For much connected robotics and AI, travel Robert Hart. The Stepback arrives successful our subscribers’ inboxes astatine 8AM ET. Opt successful for The Stepback here.

We’re taking a wintertime break! The Stepback will beryllium backmost connected January 11th, 2026. Meanwhile, you drawback up connected past issues here.

I person a soft spot for robot neglect videos. I watch them connected a loop, chuckling to myself, arsenic a benignant of therapy. Maybe I’m a sadist, possibly I request to get retired much — you tin judge maine later — but they get maine each time. So naturally, I’ve been glued to a clip of Tesla’s Optimus robot falling for illustration a felled tree astatine the company’s Autonomy Visualized arena successful Miami that’s been doing the rounds connected societal media this week.

According to the footage, Elon Musk’s vaunted humanoid robot was handing retired h2o bottles from down a array earlier knocking a bunch over, flailing its arms upward, and collapsing backwards for illustration a puppet whose strings had been severed. Watch intimately and you’ll spot 2 things: a mini plume of h2o arsenic its limb crushes a vessel mid-fall (it made maine laugh), and a mobility uncannily akin to personification removing a VR headset.

It wouldn’t beryllium the first clip Tesla has faked the autonomous part of its autonomous robot, which Musk says is cardinal to the company’s future. An early objection was conscionable a dancer successful a skintight bodysuit to show what the Tesla Bot, now Optimus, could be. Later demonstrations were revealed to beryllium (rather obviously, by the sound of it) humans successful disguise, operating the robots remotely pinch thing for illustration a VR headset, which we cognize Tesla uses successful development.

Humans person been obsessed pinch robots for centuries; from ancient tales of chromatic golems and artificial automatons to modern subject fiction, driverless cars, and Roombas, the thought of animating the inanimate pinch thing resembling life has fascinated us. Much of the existent hype for humanoids tin beryllium traced straight to Musk, truthful it is reasonable to beryllium much than a small spot skeptical erstwhile he and others committedness they’ll revolutionize the world. Musk, who has vowed to build a “robot army” of 1 cardinal humanoids, has a deserved estimation arsenic an outlandish and unreliable forecaster, and robotics has ridden much than a fewer hype waves successful its history. In the past, exertion has ever lagged the enthusiasm of those eager to bring AI into the existent world, but today, we’re being told that tech is yet fresh to deliver.

So what does fresh to present really look for illustration successful 2025?

There’s decidedly a golden unreserved of sorts for humanoid robots correct now. Every awesome tech institution has them connected their roadmap successful immoderate capacity, and the likes of Nvidia, Meta, SoftBank, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, and Tesla (duh) are each throwing superior weight — and rate — down them arsenic the adjacent large frontier successful tech. And they’re not alone: A increasing constellation of challengers want successful connected the action, including Apptronik, Boston Dynamics, Figure AI, and 1X.

China wants in, too. Beijing has decided embodied AI — which besides includes non-humanoids for illustration drones, quadrupeds, and different autonomous machines — is the cardinal to early economical growth. In its trademark fashion, it has moved to position itself arsenic a world leader successful robotics done monolithic investment, authorities directives, and authorities subsidies. Everyone from tech giants Ant Group and Baidu to startups for illustration Unitree and AgiBot is piling in.

If you spell by the demos China and everyone other is pumping out, you’d beryllium forgiven for reasoning the humanoid robot early has already arrived. This summer, robots competed successful dance, combat, track, and section events astatine the first World Humanoid Robot Games successful China. A akin arena was held successful Greece — the International Humanoid Olympiad — astatine the birthplace of the Olympic Games. Humanoid fights are much celebrated than I could person imagined and are apparently taking spot perfectly everywhere, from organized contests and underground conflict clubs to sparring pinch CEOs.

Companies are besides keen to get bots retired of factories and into the home. These kinds of human-centric spaces are why advocates opportunity humanoids are worthy pursuing alternatively of different robot assemblage types that could beryllium easier to produce. Figure said its caller Figure 03 robot tin return connected home chores, releasing a video of the bot doing dishes and folding clothes. 1X debuted Neo, which it claims is safe and “the world’s first consumer-ready humanoid robot.” There are besides videos of Neo shakily completing basal family tasks. I’m not judge I tin spend it, but if you’re interested, 1X is trading units for $20,000, pinch transportation starting successful the US adjacent year.

But existent usage cases stay slim, and awesome demos are not the aforesaid arsenic moving products. For each the advancement — and location person been awesome advances — demos are staged, scripted, aliases moreover teleoperated. For example, while it is technically existent to opportunity that Ant Group’s R1 was cooking for audiences astatine a waste and acquisition show this year, it moved astatine a gait truthful glacial it would’ve thrilled Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly. Similarly, the thought of having 1X’s Neo sounds overmuch little appealing erstwhile you recognize you must besides perpetrate to having random humans telecommute into your home to power it remotely. And likewise, robot athletics events are truthful nosy to watch because the contestants are wobbly, uncertain, and unpredictable, not because they are proficient athletes.

All of this raises the evident question: If the tech intelligibly doesn’t lucifer the hype, why are truthful galore group getting truthful excited astir humanoids? Well, for the first clip successful a agelong time, it’s not that crazy to deliberation the tech mightiness beryllium starting to drawback up.

Historically, it has been exceptionally difficult to get robots to execute moreover mundane tasks that humans do without thinking, for illustration stepping aliases picking up a solid of water. Hardware — but mostly package — was a limiting factor, and machines were confined to highly system environments and very constrictive tasks. Advances successful AI are changing that and turbocharging robot development.

The bonzer breakthroughs successful AI image and matter procreation from companies for illustration OpenAI and Google are mostly down to ample connection models, aliases LLMs, that powerfulness chatbots. These activity by utilizing analyzable networks to admit and reproduce patterns recovered successful the monolithic amounts of information they are trained on. Bigger AI models are trained connected practically everything that tin beryllium scraped from the internet, and the resulting systems are tin of acting successful a generalized way, alternatively than pursuing rigid, hand-coded rules. To usability successful the existent world, robots request this benignant of generalization, and roboticists are trying to usage the aforesaid attack to springiness machines the elastic knowing of the beingness world they’d request to past successful it.

The situation present is data. The benignant of worldly utilized to train LLMs was abundantly disposable online, but the information needed to train robots is not astir arsenic easy to travel by. Robots request elaborate examples of things moving successful the existent world, which doesn’t really beryllium astatine scale. Companies are moving difficult to alteration that, and location is simply a immense effort to create the benignant of information needed to train robot models astatine scale. On the surface, this looks ridiculous — Tesla has workers don cameras and sensors to thatch Optimus to behave for illustration a quality — but it’s working. It’s besides why companies for illustration 1X are deploying less-than-autonomous bots into peoples’ homes, arsenic doing truthful gives them the opportunity to stitchery the information needed to make autonomous bots by conducting analyzable tasks remotely, specified arsenic loading the dishwasher aliases cleaning a tricky object.

Humanoids are becoming much affordable, excessively — particularly successful China — arsenic hardware costs descend and economies of standard footwear in. While prices alteration wildly — entry-level units tin beryllium arsenic small arsenic $1,400 for Chinese exemplary Bumi to astir $13,500–$20,000 for models from Unitree aliases 1X, while business models tin costs much than houses — they’re approaching prices affordable by immoderate consumers, meaning much bots are being deployed successful the existent world. This creates a feedback loop, arsenic companies get much information to activity with, they build amended models and amended robots that much group would want, presuming they’re consenting to invited them into their homes.

But moreover pinch each this progress, it whitethorn still beryllium hype. In November, China’s starring economical readying agency warned a humanoid robot bubble could beryllium brewing, contrasting the sheer number of companies and standard of finance pinch the absence of viable usage cases. The truth is, they’re not really autonomous yet, so, different than hobbyists and researchers, who successful their correct mind would bargain one? If I wanted to get personification successful to cleanable my home, I could prosecute a cleaner without the hefty upfront costs and prevention my money until personification produces a robot that tin really do the task I bought it for.

Until companies extremity hiding down glitzy promo videos and teleoperating purportedly autonomous robots, it’s going to beryllium difficult to show wherever we are. Maybe the robots are yet coming, aliases possibly I person galore much neglect videos coming my way. Time will tell, I guess, but I’ll get the popcorn ready.