There is a discussion of humanoid robot on X.
There is the observation that people are not aware of the level of robots being used in the world now. There are the industrial (large robot arms) in factories. There are the Amazon large pallet bots rolling shelves to human supply chain workers. There are few tens of million vacuum iRobot Roomba class vacuuming and mopping bots.
The stock of operational (industrial) robots around the globe has hit an all-time high record of about 3.5-4 million units in 2023. This in turn means that the Global Robotics Market has been valued at about $65.3 billion.
— Adrian Dittmann (@AdrianDittmann) January 31, 2024
Between 2013 and 2023, the cumulative number of robots made by Amazon grew from 10,000 to 750,000.
Today, three quarters of all Amazon’s products—every conceivable item you could need and plenty you probably don’t—are handled at some point by one of the company’s robots. The 750,000 mobile robots at more than 300 Amazon fulfillment centers worldwide can trace their lineage back to the first Kiva machines. Amazon also employs more than 1.3 million workers at these locations.
Dr. Scott Walker believes that the first 5-10 years of humanoid robot and next generation neural net AI enabled robotics will be less impactful than people believe. They will used in repetitive tasks but not really challenging tasks. More intricate tasks like repairing or maintaining an engine. There will be more more mundane level use cases with a shortage of human workers. There would be easier adoption where there is less competition against people and more complementary rolls.
The first 5-10 years needed to get to the scale of millions of units.
The manufacturing market and warehouse and other industrial and supply chain use cases could absorb 50 million to 200 million robots before there would be the mass disruption of the 500 million human workers in those categories.
The larger scale would likely be getting to billions would be the mass penetration for the human consumer market.
The benign vision would be humans would in the long be freed to do what they want. The robots would do the work but humans could do what is fulfiling and their true dreams.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
I am not getting any younger. Hope Optimus and other robots will be able to assist the elderly to stay in their homes, cooking, cleaning, washing, etc. Honda has been trying for more than a decade with little to show for it.
Whoever can come up with a practical home care robot for less than $40,000 will become a trillionaire…