Humanoid robots leaped from a curiosity to the next big thing after Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang highlighted the emerging technology recently during a major speech.
"The next generation of robotics will likely be humanoid robotics," Huang said at the Nvidia GTC conference on March 18.
Flanked on stage by nine humanoid robots in development, Huang said such bots will learn to do many tasks through AI simulations and by observing humans, either in real life or from recordings.
"The ChatGPT moment for robotics may be right around the corner," Huang said. ChatGPT is the generative artificial intelligence chatbot, launched in November 2022, that spurred the current AI innovation wave. It also kicked off the AI stock rally.
Straight Out Of Science Fiction
For decades, humanoid robots have been the stuff of science fiction. Think C-3PO from "Star Wars," T-800 from "The Terminator" or Rosie the maid from "The Jetsons." But with advancements in hardware and software, such machines are starting to show up in warehouse and factory settings, at least in technology demonstrations.
Early applications for humanoid robots include moving bins and boxes in fulfillment centers and working on factory assembly lines. So, the first humanoid robots will be closer to Rosie the Riveter than Rosie the maid.
A key question companies making such robots must answer is why they have to be humanoid.
After all, stationary robotic arms have proven valuable tools for welding and assembly functions in automotive and other factories. And boxy mobile robots are ideal for moving shelves with product bins in fulfillment centers, such as those run by Amazon.com.
DARPA Competition Spurred Development
"There are certain times when you really do want something that has a human form factor," roboticist Ken Goldberg told Investor's Business Daily.
Humanoid robots would be well suited for entering dangerous environments such as a crippled nuclear power plant, he said. They would be able to traverse stairs, open doors, turn knobs, pull levers and press buttons.
"The military is interested in that too for obvious reasons," Goldberg, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, added.
It is those types of situations that prompted the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to fund a competition in humanoid robotics to spur development of the technology. The DARPA Robotics Challenge concluded in June 2015.
"How are they going to work in factory and worker settings? That's not as obvious," Goldberg said.
Amazon Working With Agility Robotics
Humanoid robots will find a place in industrial and commercial settings where space is limited and the work requires "humanlike capabilities," Melonee Wise, chief technology officer at Agility Robotics, told IBD.
Humanoid bots like Digit from Agility take up less space than other types of robots because they can dynamically adjust their center of mass to stay upright when moving objects, she said. They also can safely operate alongside human co-workers.
Agility wants to automate tasks that are highly repetitive, she said. The company is focused on the logistics and manufacturing fields, Wise said. Those are markets that have seen labor shortages, she said.
Agility is learning from early customer engagements with Amazon and GXO Logistics. It also recently announced a partnership with Manhattan Associates.
Nvidia Validates Humanoid Robots
Plus, Agility is working with AI industry leader Nvidia on tools for training humanoid robots.
"Having Nvidia focused on the toolset that we need for doing this kind of machine learning and AI operations at scale is very exciting," Wise said. "There's a lot of very promising work with regards to behavior cloning, large language models and multimodal models that make us believe that there's going to be significant advancement."
At GTC, Nvidia's Huang announced Project Groot, a general-purpose foundation model for humanoid robots. He also unveiled a new computer, Jetson Thor, for humanoid robots, as well as significant upgrades to the Nvidia Isaac robotics platform.
Nvidia is building a comprehensive AI platform for numerous humanoid robot companies including Agility, Apptronik, Boston Dynamics, Figure AI and Sanctuary AI.
BMW is trying out Figure's robot at one of its automotive plants. And Mercedes-Benz is testing Apptronik's robot for automotive manufacturing.
Huang's comments on humanoid robots helped to validate the nascent market, Zeno Mercer, senior research analyst at ROBO Global, a unit of VettaFi, told IBD.
"When Nvidia's CEO makes a comment and brings all this attention, no one wants to be on the sidelines," Mercer said.
Tesla Also Working On Humanoid Robots
Another tech visionary, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, also has been talking up humanoid robots. Tesla is developing a humanoid robot called Optimus, which it hopes will one day help manufacture its electric cars.
Challenges ahead for humanoid robots beyond perfecting the technology include getting prices down and proving their return on investment.
In a March 21 report, BofA Securities estimated that humanoid robots today cost more than $100,000 each to produce. Some like Tesla's Optimus robot would cost about $228,000 to produce, the investment firm said.
"There is a lot of interest in humanoid robots right now," Goldberg said. "And people are trying to figure out what's fact and what's fiction."
Where's My Flying Car?
Companies are making steady progress in the space, but the technology has a ways to go before it breaks through to mass production, Goldberg said.
"As a roboticist, I worry about raising expectations, because that can backfire for the industry," he said. "The timeline is uncertain."
He pointed to full self-driving cars as a technology that has taken much longer than expected to become a reality.
"It's like jet packs and flying cars that were talked about in the '50s," Goldberg said. "And we're still waiting."
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