Proof of Concept to Test Humanoid Robots (opens in new tab)

Universality matters though. It's less interesting that a hyper specific machine exists for a task than that the same machine might be able to do a wide range of tasks, provided the price point is right.

Those crop harvesting robots can’t do anything else though. They’re also not very good at weeding, or picking berries or tea. Things that require finesse. Also imagine not having to use the god awful amounts of pesticides we currently use. You’ve got to think of these humanoids as universal. You should be able to tell the robot picking weeds to stop and go do the grocery shopping ideally.

The weirdest part about the box carrying humanoids is that this problem has already been solved by fork lift style robots [0] which are being sold by many companies. When people talk about universality, having a central warehouse with movable pickup & place locations is all you need. The only thing that would be interesting is to build a universal loader/unloader that can take parts out of the boxes and insert them into machines factorio style, but that loader doesn't need to be humanoid and could instead just be put on a movable cart.

[0] https://www.hairobotics.com/products/haipick-a3

The bot may be notionally "universal" but will only operate on the DLC you buy from the robot rental company. Want it to wash dishes? That's the $20/mo dishwashing pack, or for one low price you can get the entire housework pack for only $80/mo.

Clearly that’s not the point. The end goal is essentially to build a robot that can function as a human slave would in the past.

What constitutes a "humanoid" robot is a matter of some debate: https://james.darpinian.com/blog/the-humanoid-alignment-char...