Renowned Roboticist Warns Investors Against Backing Humanoid Robot Startups: A Waste of Billions, Says Rodney Brooks

Leading robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks issues a cautionary warning to investors heavily funding humanoid robot startups: your investments may be misplaced.

Brooks, co-founder of iRobot and a long-time researcher at MIT, expresses doubt towards companies such as Tesla and Figure, which aim to imbue robots with dexterity by exposing them to videos demonstrating human tasks. In a recent essay, he terms this method “fantasy thinking.”

The issue lies in the complexity of human hands, which contain approximately 17,000 specialized tactile receptors that current robots fail to mimic. While machine learning has revolutionized speech recognition and image processing, these advancements have been facilitated by decades of established technology for gathering relevant data. Brooks highlights that we lack such a tradition when it comes to touch data.

Additionally, safety concerns arise with the implementation of full-sized walking humanoid robots. These machines consume significant energy to maintain balance and pose a hazard upon falling. The physics involved dictate that a robot twice the size of current models would possess eight times the potential for harm.

Brooks anticipates that in 15 years, successful “humanoid” robots will likely adopt wheeled designs, feature multiple arms, and incorporate specialized sensors—abandoning the human form altogether. Meanwhile, he firmly believes that today’s investments are financing costly training experiments that will never translate to mass production.