The obstacles to scaling up humanoids | Hacker News Reader

The obstacles to scaling up humanoids

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51 pointsvoxadam125 comments

Completely unsold on this take. The pace of development in China can't be ignored. The consumer market for a pretty dumb household chore bot is huge.

I own at least three! Dishwasher, laundy washer, laundry dryer...

I would get a roomba but it can't do enough fine detail to be worth it.

and so is the safety margin for a humanoid. The consumer market is huge only if the robots are highly reliable and work very well both of which are not true at the moment. Things will change but it will take quite a bit of time and much more research.

Safety stops are much more challenging in a robot that tends to fall over without active balancing. Though with ISO 25785-1 in progress maybe there'll be a workable humanoid robot safety standard in a few years.

Interesting, hadn't heard of ISO 25785-1. It appears to be for industrial robots, though, and explicitly excludes "mobile robots intended for consumer or household use".

Is the demand there at the price point and reliability levels that are currently possible?

They're all dog bots adapted to stand on back legs. None are true humanoids in the first place, none of them even have articulating pelvis.

Computers beat Gary Kasparov in chess in the 90s and we're all excited now bc it can write passable high school essays 30 years later. This is the real pace of "AI" and robotics development, decades not years.

Look at it this way. Useful Humanoid robots are at least as hard as useful self-driving cars. It took about 20 years to get from the DARPA Grand Challenge (can drive OK on an empty road) to Waymo (take one across town today.).

It’s actually going faster because it does not require public approval the same way that driving cars do because you’re in public space.

We’re seeing a lot of robotic trials happening in private warehouses and on private test ranges at pretty rapid scale

Beyond that the methods for transfer learning behavior cloning behavior authoring are very robust so that I can get joint angles directly from a human via instrumentation through vision or even commodity sensors which captured trajectories that can be immediately applied to robotic joint positions.

The real challenge is actually capturing demonstration recordings from humans because it’s the hardest thing to instrument. The core task is instrumenting data capture of existing human tasks that are not done through machines, such that they can transfer to machines.

This is easiest done with existing human operated robots because the instrumentation is free, so data can go directly into real2sim2real pipelines.

There might seem counterintuitive but most of the actual technical bits and bites are already there it’s re-orienting the economic and logistical process of labor execution that is the major challenge.

I will say though, I’m seeing less and less barriers there as time goes on. Employers really want to not have to hand human employees

Municipal approval was probably only a minor part of the development time tho no? Google was operating Waymo in Mountain View for years before they expanded. The vast majority of the time cost was in development.

I think technology development can be faster thanks to better AI systems like VLA models, but I do think the time to real deployment will be long.

My pet issue is that the dexterity of the hands is still really poor. A human hand is incredible with what it can do.

I think between the general manipulation tasks, world understanding, and more these systems are still a long ways out for widespread use, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they find niche uses near term.

ASIMO is 25 years old. PETMAN is 16 years old and Atlas is 12.

I think some of the car role will port to robot role.

Vision for cars already includes object detection, and the better that is, the better robot object detection gets. The same for "human ran out on road" would work for "walking in house, small human is now in front of me, stop!".

I wonder how much of the one will port to the other. A house has paths aka "roads", inside and out. Places the robot may walk, and not. So path navigation is a thing too. Maybe 'getting around' is mostly solved, while of course other challenges are still there.

Sort of replying to others in this part, the reason people are all hung up on humanform, is that our entire world is made for humans. Whether stairs, doors, sidewalks, doorknobs, cupboards, or even space to walk in a small kitchen... it's all made to work with human shape and size.

(Yes, while there is wheelchair access mandated, that doesn't extend to the inside of every home, and all the spaces in homes, and even then everything we have is designed to be operated by fingers/arms/hands.)

So if you solve humanform, the robot can go anywhere and manipulate/do anything a human can. That means no change to the environment when you get one. Right or wrong, that's why everyone is after humanform.

Tesla went into humanoid robots because they noticed what kind of thing was their AI architecture developing into.

They realized just how much of what an autonomous vehicle needs to do to navigate real world roads is similar to what an advanced robot would need to do to operate in real world environments. If they could get anywhere close to solving FSD, it would be an "in" on advanced robotics too.

The triumph of LLMs then made it glaringly obvious that the kind of advanced decision-making that you would need to power truly universal robots is no longer in the realm of science fiction, so a lot more companies followed.

> Tesla went into humanoid robots because they noticed what kind of thing their AI architecture was developing into.

Tesla went into humanoid robots to pump the stock. Musk recently claimed that 80% of Tesla's value is in Optimus.[1]

(What is it with US auto company management? Tesla did well for a while, then Musk got distracted. No new models in years, and the Cybertruck turned out to be a dud. Stellantis has cut Chrysler down to one line of mini-vans, raised prices on everything, and messed up Jeep, which killed sales. The dealers demanded the CEO be fired, which was done. GM is being GM, plugging along. The CEO of Ford seems to have a clue. He got a BYD car to drive around and has been telling everybody that Ford has to get that good and that cheap, and fast, which they are trying to do.)

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-story-of-optim...

Tesla went into humanoid robots to pump the stock.

Everything else in your comment is more locked to direct observable info.

However this really isn't. And frankly every CEO wants a healthy stock price, that doesn't mean the primary goal is "pump the stock", which is what you are stating is the goal here.

That said, the Chrysler/Stellantis thing is just weirdosville. One thing I liked was this new platform:

https://www.caranddriver.com/ram/1500-ramcharger

but:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a64781518/ram-ramcharger-1...

They put all that work into it, hype, pre-launch, and it's even built on a common platform. The truck is basically the same as their pure-electric version, as the engine is simply used as a generator to charge. No major changes to the rest of the vehicle, just an added engine.

You may wonder why I like this? Well I was hoping it's carry over to smaller Jeeps or even cars. I live in a rural area, and it gets quite cold here (-40C sometimes), which really reduces range. I want a PHEV, but also with a backup power plant.

This is that.

It also reduces a lot of the complexity of a hybrid. No dual drive train, or one part driven by gas engine, the other electric.

I can see myself driving much of the summer with the engine only coming on rarely, but then needing the engine more and more in the winter. But at least I'd be on battery most of the time, even then.

Heck, I can drive 100s of km without there being a fast charger here.

We need bridge vehicles for the time being.

But my rambling really goes back to, they developed the platform, started selling it, but held off on this final piece because of.. reasons?

Weirdos.

> Tesla went into humanoid robots to pump the stock. Everything else in your comment is more locked to direct observable info. However this really isn't.

Musk says it is: "Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on X that about 80% of his automaker’s value will come from Optimus humanoid robots. Musk said in mid-2024 that Optimus robots could make Tesla a $25 trillion company, equal to more than half the value of the S&P 500 at the time of his comment."[1]

I'd like a good $35,000 electric Jeep myself.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/musk-tesla-value-optimus-rob...

Sure, but that's discussing the outcome of a goal. That doesn't make it the goal. To highlight this, they've been working on Optimus for what? A decade?

'Pump the stock' has more of a bait and switch, or a scammish connotation, at least to me. Every company must be aware of stock price to a degree, and tout their successes and products and goals. That's not pumping, which is often conjoined with pump'n'dump.

But anyhow.

What I like about that platform, is you could have that $35k electric Jeep, and I could have a $45k electric Jeep with built in generator and other fluff modz, but it would be built on the exact same platform. Same parts except for the generator+tank.

One of the benefits could be space for extra bling. You could put a water tank on the mounting brackets for the fuel tank, or something else interesting. You could convert your model to a gen model, even buying parts from the wreckers on the cheap, should your circumstances change. Or the reverse! Remove the gen+tank if desired.

I can imagine needed the gen+tank for 4 years, then maybe I suddenly have sufficient fast chargers locally...

Heck selling a model with the wiring + tank would add minimal weight. Even just the wiring. Imagine being able to rent an engine for a week, a month, a year? The mount rails and a generic, standardized connector is there, the software supports it, an open API.

So much could be done, but of course won't.

But I do, as maybe you can tell, really like the idea of a shared platform.

Elon wanted to automate final assembly. Final assembly in cars is anything but final; it's most of what regular people consider "building" phase of the car where the body on a cart rolls forward and human workers attach parts to it until it rolls off at the end.

A lot of final assembly processes are already highly automated, albeit with human hands as tip of robots. Heavy objects such as entire assembled dashboard spanning an entire width of the car, or seats complete with headrest, are slid in from side riding on a carriage, often following a human hand that route cables and to confirm alignments for attachment.

Joint wears of worker humans embedded in the processes as robots are tracked and managed as well, by computer simulation, data tracking, and optimization.

Tool used, such as drills, are highly computerized as well, automatically setting and logging turns and torques, types and numbers of screws removed from the workstation shelf, etc., but they are still manipulated and articulaed by humans, as robots aren't good enough.

Robotizing final assembly is the holy grail for which Honda was doing robots since late 80s until Japanese economy collapsed and AI researches stopped. Steve Jobs was dreaming the same lights-out factory concept during NeXT years. More recently, Foxconn bought robots in hundreds at one point in hope that it will be useful for iPhone. Sony actually shipped some numbers of PS4 from a fully robotized prototype line.

The difference between them and Tesla is that they're so far the latest and about the least actually committed to it, obviously due to lack of engineering talent outside of UI software.

> Humanoid robots are at least as hard as useful self-driving cars

A self-driving car only has to do one thing - drive. It's also got a stable wheeled base and only a couple of degrees of freedom - got to steer and regulate it's speed.

Even if the only thing you wanted the humanoid robot to do is drive your car, it'd be massively harder for it since it's got all those degrees of freedom, will be bouncing around in the drivers seat, and presumably doesn't even know how to drive.

If the humanoid is more than a gimick - meant to be general purpose, then it needs an AGI brain and ability to learn for itself. It's not going to be learning in a simulator like your FSD car - it's be learning on the road like your teenage kid.

(a few specific towns, which have done various things to smooth operating conditions for Waymo.)

It's useful, don't get me wrong, but when Waymo can handle Cairo and Rome, I'll consider it a solved problem.

What specific things do you think the "towns" of SF, LA, NYC, and Tokyo have done to smooth operating conditions for Waymo?

Drive according to western standards. If you've never driven outside of those, then it's hard to imagine. No one follows the laws. Lanes are entirely made up, no one follows the lines on the road. If you're not agressive to the point of someone in LA about to shoot you, you won't get in.

I ride Waymos and I believe they can be made to work in Rome et al, but honestly, I doubt most human drivers can drive in eg Mumbai.

I'm familiar with Indian traffic. Those events are more frequent in some places, but they happen everywhere. In any case, it's not what the OP is talking about. They were talking about cities improving conditions to make things easier for AVs. LA wasn't Mumbai before Waymo and it still isn't after.

Maybe cities like Cairo are problems, not the algorithms that can't drive there.

The problem with respect to what? The end-goal of self-driving cars (and humanoid robots) is to work in the environments created for humans. Otherwise we can just put down rails across all cities and call it a tram, or design purpose-built robots for all tasks.

Edit: Stated more explicitly: the human world is the way it is because of many reasons and can't always be changed naively (it's not like nobody in Cairo has thought about improving the traffic situation, or architects haven't thought about the ease of cleaning different flooring material). Robots which are general purpose with respect to their human-like capabilities must necessarily also accept a world in which humans live.

The end goal of is to make them work in reasonable environments. If it works fine in 90% of cities but doesn't work in Cairo, then fuck Cairo, no driverless cars for them.

We have Roombas. I saw a number of Husqvarna lawn robots in Sweden (I've seen none in the U.S. so far). But neither of these are exactly flying off the shelves.

Humanoid robots feel like they're decades away for being something people would want.

I've owned several Roomba type robots, both actual Roombas and competing brands. None of them have really saved any time or labor. They always get stuck under furniture or tangled on charger cables. They don't work on stairs. And clearing dog hair from the roller is a huge hassle. I fully expect to still be paying a human cleaning service decades from now.

> And clearing dog hair from the roller is a huge hassle.

I'd like to get a robovacuum/vacuubot but I'd assume that cat hair fouls things up just as much as dog hair does.

Not really. A golden retriever has hair longer than any cat does, and of course large dogs shed much more.

> I fully expect to still be paying a human cleaning service decades from now.

I'm curious if a cleaning service wasn't an option, would the Roomba be worth the saved time compared to doing the cleaning yourself?

I also own a Roomba, but I don't have a cleaning service so my options are either do 100% of the cleaning or let the Roomba do its thing and manually take care of the difference.

For me it's just one less room I have to sweep.

Of course there always be "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home" people, that's life.

Roomba is pretty mediocre at a single job it's kind of able to do.

Humanoid robots _potentially_, _hypothetically_ can do anything that human can do because they are designed for environment, tools and equipment that we designed for our bodies.

> But neither of these are exactly flying off the shelves.

Roombas and lawn robots are all extremely popular.

Robot vacuums are popular but maybe they were referring to the iRobot brand, which is rapidly failing.

I have vacuum robots. I'm considering a lawn robot. My suburban city has two large ones mowing the parks, had never heard of them previously. Mostly worried about pets and critters.

I'm so confused why you would use a laughably bad human when you could have a specialist robot. These things are going to get outperformed by the latter even more so than humans would.

I'm not surprised at all they're struggling to find buyers.

"The vision" is that instead of building 9999 specialist robots for 9999 different tasks, you mass produce one robot model that can do all of them.

Less efficiently, sure, but for the manufacturing, logistics, maintenance? The economies of scale are immense.

The reason why we weren't doing exactly that back in the 80s isn't that universal humanoid robots somehow weren't desirable. It's that for a universal humanoid hardware to be useful, you need a fairly universal AI to back it.

That "universal AI" was nowhere to be seen back in the 80s, or the 90s, or the 00s. Now, we finally have a good idea of how to build the kind of AI required for it.

> you mass produce one robot model that can do all of them.

This just occurred to me: do standard industry robotic arms not fit that description perfectly? They're not specialized for any particular task, the only customizable parameters are the size and the end effector.

They can move around car bodies or seats, or pick up an airbrush. They can probably be installed with a five-fingered hand, or onto a giant human torso, should such tools somehow made sense for some applications. They feel like the generalist robot that meets most of the expectations for the hypothetical factory humanoids, sans being a humanoid. I mean, I get it, but aren't those existing bots just what "the vision" calls for?

I can see that for the factory floor, but there's no particular reason for "it" to be "humanoid".

It's basically a robot arm with mobility at that point, and if you need more than one, just have more than one robot wheel into place. There's no particular reason to have two arms.. one, or three, or five are all sensible numbers. Heck, a chassis supporting a variable number of arms and other appendages (sensors and so on) is plausible, and the control system looks more like an ant-colony mind than a human one.

Which is a long-winded way of saying, there's no particular reason to link embodiment and cognition at the individual arm level in a factory scenario.

On the factory floor, all the tasks that were a good fit for "a robot arm bolted down to the floor next to the assembly line" are already performed by robot arms bolted down to the floor next to the assembly line.

What remains is all the weird and awkward automation-resistant tasks where "just get a human to do it" is still easier and cheaper than redesigning everything to maybe get old school automation to handle them.

This is the kind of niche humanoid robots are currently aiming at. It's no coincidence that at least 3 companies trying to develop humanoid robots have ties to vehicle manufacturers.

Makes sense - but I'm still not clear on why it would need to be humanoid in form-factor or indeed self-contained/autonomous and not a more flexible, mobile, multipurpose robot-arm-like-thing?

Like is there any particular reason for it to be about 6' tall with exactly two 3' long, three-jointed arms rather than any of the other possible permutations for those things?

You want robots that can do tasks humans can do but robot arms can't - which has a way of driving the design decisions. The more you move towards "flexible, mobile, multipurpose", the more you move towards the humanoid frames.

Just look up how vehicle interior assembly is performed now. Look at all the things that are still done by humans - all the different assembly stations, all the loading and unloading, all the installation operations, all the panels and wiring harnesses and plugs and bolts.

Then try to come up with a robot frame that would do all of it - every single operation that's currently done by a human - while being significantly less complex than a humanoid frame.

The design space constraints would choke the life out of you.

But then you need one robot that's got 9,999 specializations. A human can't actually do 10,000 things. You need 10,000 humans, each that goes through a specialization process (training, developing muscle memory, etc) that builds both physiology and mental capability specific to the skill. Not only does the robot need to be capable of every incredibly difficult physical skill we learn, it needs a matching program.

It's impossible to do this in a general way. This could theoretically be scalable (produce the robot and have 10,000 companies all develop their own specialization routines), but the hardware (both the parts as well as neural interface) needs to be as capable as a human body, which isn't even remotely true. The physical robot will always limit what skills it can learn, on top of the difficulty of programming the skill.

I think we're hundreds of years away from making a robot that's as capable as a human. We would get there faster with synthetics or cyborgs. Create a human body without a brain, use Neuralink to operate it. Until then, specialized robots are the only thing that will scale to 10,000 skills.

The words you're looking for are: "transfer learning".

Currently, dedicated robotics datasets are pathetic - in both the raw size and domain diversity - compared to what we have for generative AIs in domains like text, sound, video or images. So adding any more data helps a lot.

If you trained a robot to fully strip down a specific e-scooter model - whether for repair, remanufacturing or recycling - that training data would then help with any similar tasks. As well as a variety of seemingly unrelated tasks that also require manual dexterity, manipulation and spatial reasoning.

Those "9999 specializations" all overlap in obvious and subtle ways - and they feed little bits of skills and adaptations to each other. Which is why a lot of the robotic companies are itching to start pushing the units out there as soon as they are able to perform some useful tasks. They want that real world training data.

The question is how much less efficiently. The point on which it all hinges is that it needs to be a little less efficiently, but the reality is probably that it's so much less that it's no longer really viable.

Like, Digit costs a quarter mil and is rated for 10 thousand hours. It can stack boxes. For that price you can turn every box in your warehouse into an AGV and they'll last you forever.

The other part of this vision is that out of 9999 different tasks, only 1-2 are routine enough and valuable enough to merit a purpose-built robot. But a generalist robot could theoretically do an almost infinite variety of low-stakes tasks that people currently do.

The other part of that argument that I've seen is that they'd be able to use generic tools made for humans.

I think the reasoning is that the world is built for humans, so if you need a robot to do arbitrary human tasks in an unmodified environment then perhaps that gives an advantage.

The premise itself seems bogus though - there's plenty of tasks such as traditional assembly line and conveyor belt automation where a stable robot bolted to the floor, with a wired power source and custom manipulators is going to be a much better option.

For a mobile robot stability and reliability are key, and it's hard to see how a humanoid robot would be anything other than a massive downgrade for applications like Amazon's warehouse robots, hospital drug delivery robots, mall security robots, robot vacuum cleaners, etc. Wheels for the win.

OTOH there's the dream/hype of a domestic robot doing all your household chores, where humanoid form might actually be a plus, but at this point that's a pipe dream, and I seriously doubt many people really want C-3PO in the kitchen washing the dishes even if he is managing to do it without breaking anything or short-circuiting himself. It's like a 60's vision of the future, with people in flying cars or living on mars. No product-market fit.

If you can have one robot do multiple tasks at 80% of the capability of a special-purpose robot, then that’s a win. Buy a fleet of them and just repurpose them as necessary.

If they’re humanoid then they can already use tools, equipment, and access methods we already use for ourselves.

What part of the vision doesn’t make sense?

Then they're just a worse human on every metric: from capability to real cost.

When these things can make a burger without help I'll change mind, but right now they're not even close to that. Everything I've seen so far makes them look like clumsy pieces of junk. I haven't even seen one make a sandwich without a human having to prepare every step for them so they could then perform "cutting motion" or "stack ingredients" (painfully slowly and shaking like a geriatric).

Dont look at the robot making the sandwich at a restaurant. Look at the robots already being used at food processing facilities. The robots are already doing it, they just dont look like robots. My dishwasher also doesnt look anything like a hired dishwasher.

https://youtu.be/U2sN5g6wOBU

I explicitly said they're going to get outperformed by specialist robots, just like the humans they poorly imitate sometimes are.

That was my entire point!

Except:

- No pain

- No breaks

- No protesting/strikes

- No rises needed

- No happiness to take care of

All things business find annoying.

Instead of a large group of low power, easily manipulatable and controllable workforce, you will have traded for a small group of very powerful, wealthy and influential business and tech people who now fully control the production of your labor. I'd be very worried if I was that business, in terms of the control that company would now wield over me.

They could release a software update and disable your entire workforce unless you agreed to pay more money. They could slow your workforce down to prop up a competitor, etc.

It will likely end like cloud computing. So, not amazing, but certainly not what you describe.

Your current cloud provider can absolutely "release a software update and disable your entire workforce unless you agreed to pay more money". The reason why they don't is quite obvious (competition).

They're going to have lots of downtimes and constant raises. Human joint longevity is insanely long by standards of robotics, and supplier costs only go up.

Well sure, but you asked about the vision not the current state.

I have very little doubt that they’ll be making burgers within 10 years. The hardware is already capable I think - it’s mostly just a software problem now.

It's not remotely capable enough. There's a reason you never see one of these things cut something soft like a tomato into even slices (or at all).

Their extremely clumsy fingers/hands can pretty much just open and close. I have doubts they could even fasten a screw using any kind of screwdriver, given the hardware's overall lack of precision and degrees of freedom in their digits.

They have about enough degrees of freedom to grip most things, but not enough to manipulate (such as rotate) something like a screwdriver they are already holding. Some sources claim they can be precise to within around 1 newton with their grip force - this does not include the additional error introduced by the rest of the robot the hand is attached to. This is relevant if they're holding something that is also pressed against a cutting-board. Best case for them is simply holding an object without having to exert further control, since they have some sort of clutch mechanism that decouples the motors and essentially locks their fingers in place. That gets rid of the shaking you'd otherwise see when they have to exert continuous motor effort. You do not have that luxury when you are manipulating something soft, such as when cutting a tomato, or when you're trying to turn a screwdriver in your hands.

We can deduce they are at least an order of magnitude off human precision, likely multiple. These things are not going to cut tomatoes into something you'd put onto a sandwich or burger, then sell to customers, any time soon.

The gen 3 hand from Optimus (Tesla) has 22 degrees of freedom in the hand and 3 in the wrist - it's more than capable of twisting a screwdriver or holding a knife well enough to cut a tomato. Like I said, it's a software problem - there's a reason the optimus robots are being tele-operated at their demos. The hardware is capable enough, it's just that the control software isn't up to the task yet.

Nobody is buying them today. But these shaky clumsy versions didn't exist even a few years ago. The hype promises these things tomorrow, which is obvious BS. But the better they look today the more investment will be poured into their R&D which accelerates real improvement, which accelerates investment, etc.

Generalist robotics are all about minimizing or at least front loading some portion of retooling cost, minimizing overhead associated with safety and compliance, and being able to capitalize what would have otherwise been human opex. Those pressures aren't going anywhere.

You know they're getting better, right?

Once they're good enough, I'm sure they will be used somewhere.

These aren't. They're not even ten percent there. I don't get why you'd try to mass-produce and market them.

Tesla is going to have proper autonomous driving in their consumer vehicles before they make one useful humanoid robot.

That's the part I find frustrating as well. The Optimus demos I've seen show a product that is far, far, far from ready for prime time while Musk and others act like it's amazingly capable.

The recent clip posted by Marc Benioff was...painful. It took a few seconds to reply to a simple greeting. Its next bit of speech in response to a query of where to get a Coke has a weird moment where it seems like it interrupts itself. Optimus offers to take Benioff to the kitchen to get a Coke. Optimus acknowledges Benioff's affirmative response, but just stands there. Then you hear Musk in the background muttering that Optimus is "paranoid" about the space. Benioff backs up a few feet. Optimus slowly turns then begins shuffling forward. Is it headed to the kitchen? Who knows!

The reaction to that should not be "OMG I cannot wait to pay you $200-$500k for one of these!" It should be "You want HOW MUCH for THIS? Are you nuts?"

OK, so you do get the vision.

Like fusion power reactor are, and have been for a long time?

No, I never said that.

> If you can have one robot do multiple tasks at 80% of the capability of a special-purpose robot

What does them being humanoid have to do with this? There are other form factors that could get to 80% but might be simpler to implement.

The whole point of humaniod robots is that they can work in environments designed for humans. And the world is already full of those!

If that ends up being a dominant or niche part of the robot market is way too early to predict.

Ah, Agility Robotics' Jonathan Hurst has a talk that I can't find (quickly) about the various benefits of a humanoid form. I could find a 90 second snippet [0] about why their robot has legs. In that case, they use legs to traverse terrain that is difficult for wheels, like stairs or with large debris on the ground. Of the other video, I remember them suggesting that arms help with staving off a fall or reaching above the center of mass. I think they said that they put a head with 'eyes' to give the sensors a better view and so on.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHmmySGdaoM

And what would that "other form factor" be?

Can that "other form factor" climb stairs? Or operate existing power tools? Or get into a generic car to get transported to a new workplace? Or get teleoperated by a human with mocap gloves?

Non-humanoid robots don't get simplicity for free. They have to trade off capabilities to get there.

OP mentioned a standard of being able to do 80% of human activities. You might need human legs to climb stairs, but then again, if you work in a building with elevators, that might be a pretty simple tradeoff to make.

> Or operate existing power tools? Or get teleoperated by a human with mocap gloves?

Requires grippers that can hold in a similar way to human hands.

> Or get into a generic car to get transported to a new workplace?

My dog can do this and traverse a flight of stairs, and she is decidedly not humanoid.

So, a dog body, but with a pair of humanlike hands attached?

I fail to see how that would be any less complex than making a humanoid frame in the first place.

Or whatever man. The post I responded to said they wanted a robot that could do 80% of human tasks. It's easy to start naming things that a human can't do, but actually think about the tasks humans perform on a day to day basis and the environments they perform them in. Could it ride in a car? Anything that can fit on a car seat can. Dogs, grocery bags and even human babies all fit very comfortably in any car. Could it take the stairs? Maybe, but at my work we don't have to take the stairs.

The conversation is a little reminiscent of "before the car was invented, if you asked what people wanted they would have said a faster horse". If robots became popular in day-to-day, it's not hard to imagine that we would make space for them in our lives anyway. Cars can't traverse the kinds of terrain a horse can, and they require fuel so we have roads and gas stations. If you made a robot that was actually helpful and couldn't take the stairs, you'd start installing dumbwaiters in buildings.

No, "whatever man" does NOT get you out of your design constraints.

Robots that can't solve a diverse range of tasks in arbitrary human-made environments aren't going to "become popular". And if robots don't "become popular", no one is going to redesign every single environment to suit them better.

They're struggling to find buyers because they can't do anything useful _today_. For the price of a car it's obviously hard to find early adopters.

The "S" in "Humanoid Robot" is for "Safety."

What's the worst that could happen? https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/humans

I think these will be hurdled sooner than people think. Every obstacle has been successfully hurdled as of now, just not in one single robot. Every robot right now has pros and cons due to production needs. Robot good at one thing may not have dexterous hands or robots rushed to be manufactured like the g1 were shipped more as cool commodities than anything useful.

This is a superficial article.

The biggest bottlenecks are raw ingredients, power, and factories. Once the automated manufacturing flywheel gets started, units can be produced very rapidly. Specialized machines produce low-level components, while more generalized machines assemble higher-level components as well as products like themselves and other robots.

People don't factor a human's total compensation beyond an hourly wage.

Machines don't need as much breathing room as humans.

Machines can work a 6-day, 16-hour schedule.

Humanoid robots are notable worse than humans in many aspects that impact productivity. If a humanoid robot is ultimately 33% as productive as a worker in a developing country who gets a wage of $10k USD annually and works 8 hours per day every day, then then robot has to cost less than $10k annually all in to be a good replacement. Assuming a 5 year useful lifespan and $2k in maintenance per year, results in the robot needing to cost ~$40k before it can replace a human's productivity. And that is inclusive of training and setup, and I doubt we'll have robots that are capable of learning as quickly as average humans without dedicated specialists training them... which raises the cost.

In general, you can get a dedicated machine for most human tasks that is easily 10-1000x productivity if you have a few million in capital. There are tasks on the margin where human flexibility and dexterity that having a human operate a $10k sewing machine is going to be very very hard to replace.

Can't machines work a 7-day, 24-hour schedule? That said, humanoid robots strike me as a jack-of-all-trades tool, our environment is full of things that are optimized for human-sized and -shaped users, but if you can purpose-build your robot for a factory, it's going to be more efficient at a narrow set of tasks there.

That is the humanoid robot use case with time for charging, maintenance, and offline during repair. This is just a rough estimate of amortizing those costs and comparing them against a 7-day work week.

Isn't the biggest bottleneck just that they need to adequately and reliably be able to do useful work at a better price-performance ratio than a human ?

And that's just not the case yet?

The biggest bottlenecks are hardware design and software design. Materials science to an extent, particularly battery materials, but we could build robots with currently-available materials and power density if only we knew how to make them work usefully enough.

I'm not against the concept and I agree the manufacturing can be scaled. There just isn't a product yet.

Article calls out demand — so far there has been no demand for large numbers of humanoid robots.

And it is a dumb take. As with any new technology, it has a chicken and an egg problem to overcome. Humanoid robots are developing very rapidly now that AI is progressing the way it is. It is in the same vane as 32k should be enough for anybody.

I think the article understates the demand a robot would have for even just simple household tasks like folding laundry.

Comments in this post will age like milk.

Humanoid robots are probably never coming. The fact is - flesh and blood humans pay for their own upkeep. Wear-and-tear, particularly on a heavy lifting robot, would probably be their biggest cost and might always outweigh the cost savings.

I've commissioned dozens of robot cells (6-axis industrial arms for manufacturing are old, proven tech) and the wear and tear costs have been inconsequential. Even a large arm like a Fanuc R2000iC only uses about $0.50 in electricity per hour, some cells use significant power for pneumatics (in particular, compressed air venturi vacuum generators).

A couple grand for gearbox rebuilds every few years, replacement vacuum cups or worn hard tooling as needed, troubleshoot electrical issues as they arise... and your quarter million robot cell ($60k of that is the robot, most of the rest is NRE labor) will only need one human instead of eight to spit out parts every 60 seconds for the next decade.

Unless you think the humanoid robots are going to wear out significantly faster than existing robots, wear and tear costs are negligible.

With tight process controls, turning a work cell that has multiple humans doing manual labor for material handling, fastening, inspection, labeling, etc. into one intelligent human keeping the automation well adjusted is a solved problem. Eliminating that last human - the one that makes decisions instead of moves materials - with a humanoid robot is going to take decades.

We can make things that last for decades, we just choose not to. Planned obsolescence is a business strategy, as is rapid breakdown of things we buy.

A generic example, fridges could easily last 40 to 50 years without maintenance. They wouldn't be all that more expensive either. Volvo, and the B-52 bomber program showed this, with Volvo having some models unchanged for 20 years. The B-52 has been in service longer than most people have been alive.

Each time an early wear or failure point is found in the B-52, it is documented, fixed, and rolled out to all B-52s. Their ancient, but more reliable than newer bombers and require less maintenance.

We could do this for everything. Design a fridge, and after 10 years collect the failures and see how they broke. Keep selling the same fridge, the same parts, and eventually it's a rock.

We don't do this, companies don't do this, because it's not best for profit.

So my point is robot maintenance could be minor, and if it was purely a lease model, would remain minor... because the company would profit from lower overall maintenance costs.

Lastly, compare a robot to a car driving 100s of thousands of KM. I've driven new cars to 150000km with almost no failure of any kind (except brakes. tires). So maybe not as bad as thought.

> A generic example, fridges could easily last 40 to 50 years without maintenance. They wouldn't be all that more expensive either. Volvo, and the B-52 bomber program showed this, with Volvo having some models unchanged for 20 years. The B-52 has been in service longer than most people have been alive.

B-52s require regular inspections and maintenance just like any other aircraft. A fridge is less complicated, but it's still a machine. Even my grandfather's clock needed some work done every couple decades, and it didn't contain refrigerant, a compressor, fans, or have to deal with condensation.

Yes but how old are the B-52s? And how much maintenance?

All the parts that have been shown to wear rapidly, have been reengineered and updated across the fleet. Compared to newer platforms, it's a rock.

I was responding to you saying we could make fridges which could easily last 40-50 years without maintenance (and somehow not cost much more).

> Yes but how old are the B-52s? And how much maintenance?

They get heavy, months-long maintenance where they replace major components (often including major structural ones) every four years. Presumably there is more frequent minor maintenance before then. I don’t imagine their age of 70ish years is really relevant since I assume they’re approaching Ships of Theseus at this point.

I was responding to you saying we could make fridges

Well OK, but you starting out by discussing the B-52, so I responded in kind.

They get heavy, months-long maintenance where they replace major components

Unless the documentary I watched was wrong, and of course it could be, that isn't "just replace things because". Instead, it's "if those components need replacement".

Now, I do recall that sometimes they'll discover an early-wear component, and do fleet-wide upgrades to fix that flaw. But that's different than maintenance to replace worn parts, for of course all B-52s fly different missions, have different wear as a result.

My point is, some of those B-52s are being inspected, but not having much done to them, where as others a lot more.

I don't think you can really, fairly compared a long running platform like the B-52 with a newer aircraft. Not in terms of stability of the platform, because the concept here is "fixing engineering defects that exhibit early wear".

Whenever I buy a car, I attempt to never buy the first year of a model revision. I wait until near the end of that run, often 4 or 5 years in, as car manufacturers constantly update assembly and build to deal with parts they've seen as early-wear. This isn't really debatable in a meaningful way, it's simply what's done.

And that's my point. If you look at my original post, I specify that the way to get 'stable', is to keep the exact same platform, and improve early wear points.

The post I responded to said:

Wear-and-tear, particularly on a heavy lifting robot, would probably be their biggest cost and might always outweigh the cost savings.

So you can see why I was specifying how this can be mitigated.

But all of that said, we clearly know this really isn't true. While people will still use shovels, we now have backhoes for a reason. People could use horses, but we have cars for a reason. Mechanical replacements exist for almost everything, and the wear and tear is cost effective and worth it, even with the price of fuel, maintenance, and regular upkeep.

And, even along with the fact that companies engineer for planned obsolescence and forced replacement.

> Well OK, but you starting out by discussing the B-52, so I responded in kind.

...because you used B-52s as an example in your argument that fridges could be made to run maintenance free for decades.

> Unless the documentary I watched was wrong, and of course it could be, that isn't "just replace things because". Instead, it's "if those components need replacement".

Yes, that's how maintenance works. Why would you have thought I was saying it was just for fun? The every-four-years maintenance (PDM) involves a deep inspection of the whole aircraft and replacing parts that are fatigued or otherwise showing signs of wear. I would assume they're doing this because they've found that four years is a good rate to find and replace parts that are going to fail well before they're likely to. Airplane parts wear out after use. Frames experience stress from flying and become fatigued.

Similarly, refrigerant can leak when seals fail. I imagine that on the span of decades outgassing might be a problem too. I haven't dealt with compressor failures personally, but they're mechanical components and I assume eventually lubrication gets to be a problem. Rubber gaskets degrade over time. Fungus/algae can grow in the lines used to drain condensation to the evaporation pan and eventually block them, causing the fridge to build up ice and eventually leak water. Fans will fail over time because bearings wear or insulation on windings degrade.

> My point is, some of those B-52s are being inspected, but not having much done to them, where as others a lot more.

That inspection involves nearly complete disassembly. Which documentary did you watch? Aerodynamic surfaces and structural elements get replaced from fatigue and wear. Parts get removed because of corrosion (airplanes get exposed to a lot of moisture). New components get introduced because systems get upgraded. This is normal and expected, but it's all maintenance. From an article[0]:

---

> Foreman said it typically takes a B-52 between 220 and 260 days to go through depot maintenance, depending on parts availability and whether a bomber has any age-related stress fractures or corrosion that need to be repaired. The Air Force is still trying to figure out how much more time the upgrades might add to that schedule, he said.

> Cracking and other structural issues are common on the six-decade-old B-52, Foreman said, and sometimes require components to be replaced. But the Air Force is used to catching and fixing those problems, he said, and the aircraft should be able last well into the 2050s — perhaps to 2060 — without more in-depth structural upgrades.

---

> So you can see why I was specifying how this can be mitigated.

No, I can't, not to the degree you claimed. I don't think your argument about being able to make a maintenance-free-for-decades fridge--pardon the pun--holds water[1], much less without significantly increasing the cost. If you're expecting them to do all the work of discovering issues upfront, why would the cost of doing that not inflate the price significantly? Also, ongoing inspections of the fridge would cost money.

If your argument is that eventually we would be able to make humanoid robots where the maintenance costs are negligible, then sure, maybe. That seems within the realm of possibility.

But again, you said we could make fridges which didn't need maintenance for several decades. I don't think that's within the realm of possibility. You used something (the B-52) which needs regular maintenance as an example of why we should be able to make something else (a fridge) which needs almost none. This is what I was responding to.

[0] https://defensenews.com/air/2024/02/20/tinker-air-force-base...

Well, I still feel the age of the platform, its use case, means that the B-52 is a good thing to point to. But, OK, fair enough... the rigors of military maintenance are indeed there, and of use. And as you've demonstrated, more rigorous than I thought.

I'll take another tact here.

https://forcedistancetimes.com/asymmetric-why-china-still-ca...

You may be aware, but it wasn't until 2017? that China could make a ball point pen from domestic parts. The tolerances of the ball, the machinery to make it, the quality of steel... just wasn't there.

Yet we've had that in the West for most of a century? Regardless, it's not about specific timelines, but instead about the fact that most of our modern world could not be crafted by hand. Modern molding, quality of steel and components, machine tolerances, all of this means we're able to make products to tolerances and specifications that were simply impossible before.

The reason I stressed the Volvo, the B-52, is because they are platforms known for fixing stress points, early wear, resolving manufacturing defects, and becoming far more reliable as a result. Unlike modern manufacturers, who mostly derive profit from full replacement of dead products, the profit motive for the Volvo and the B-52 aren't there in the same capacity.

I have nothing against profit, but in this case I do believe it has resulted in far less research into reliability. And the constant churn for 'new new', results in change with little benefit but a constant change to manufacturing methods, and so on.

It's so demonstrably bad, that Quebec (where I live) has passed laws stating that appliances such as fridges, are good not for a year, or two years, but instead a 'reasonable timeframe'. It's purposely vague, for example a single person buying a $1500 fridge, vs someone buying a $800 with a family of 4 might expect more wear and tear, and the warranty not quite as long.

But the reason behind this law, is fridges used to last a least a decade, meanwhile LG fridges often fail in just a few years these days.

Back to the main point, we have the ability to product parts with incredible consistence and to very finite tolerances. Modern failures are no more down to type of material (you cite rubber, and yes that can be an issue), or to unexpected wear.

What I've been trying to convey is, we have part manufacturing down quite well now. Longer term platforms without change, and constant improvement on unexpected wear points, would result in far better outcomes on that front.

This is a far cry from the original post I replied to, which felt robots would have little use from the overwhelming maintenance costs.

I was never arguing that we couldn’t make things more reliable, just that a fridge which lasts 40 years without any failures isn’t realistic

But it can be, that's my point. It can be!

In another post, I spoke of a leasing model. Now to be clear, I am 100% against a leasing model of ownership foisted upon us all, for everything we own.

However fridges are a good example, as when they break food spoils. Potentially some expensive food, such a frozen meat. If they were leased, and if it was mandated that under leasing models the company was responsible for replacement food costs?

Then I firmly believe, under that failure cost, that in under a decade fridges would last 100+ years without maintenance.

Products used to last longer, they really and truly did. That's why that law was passed in Quebec, and it's not the only place. We had products which lasted longer in the 60s in some cases, "over-engineered", yet our manufacturing capabilities and tolerances and quality control were not on par, not even close with our capabilities now.

I am literally more than doubling down on my statement, my 100+ years compared to 40 years. The motive isn't there, it isn't a lack of capability.

Anyhow, I suspect you still don't agree. But I do believe you'd agree that there isn't a profit motive in many aspects of our market for tireless improvements? And that, even if you think my statements are fantastical, you still may agree that we could do better?

> But it can be, that's my point. It can be!

You have not explained how. You've just described ways you think we could incentivize longer-lasting products. Having incentives doesn't make materials science or engineering magically be able to do things it couldn't before, especially when such incentives aren't new.

I'm interested in hearing your actual technical points as to how we can address any of the problems I've mentioned, not just your assertions that it's clearly doable somehow.

> We had products which lasted longer in the 60s in some cases, "over-engineered", yet our manufacturing capabilities and tolerances and quality control were not on par, not even close with our capabilities now.

I never argued things didn't last longer in the past, and I'm not sure why you're acting like I did. I do think appliances are more prone to failure today, though I also think the reputation for things in the past lasting so long is heavily biased by the fact that repairing devices (i.e. maintenance) was more common back then, and because we didn't worry about safety or efficiency nearly as much, and because of good old survivorship bias.

> I am literally more than doubling down on my statement, my 100+ years compared to 40 years. The motive isn't there, it isn't a lack of capability.

As an example, humans have been trying to prevent corrosion of metal objects for literally thousands of years. The global annual economic impact of corrosion today is estimated at $2.5 trillion. We've made major advances in materials science and have alloys, coatings, and other technologies which have allowed a lot of applications which just wouldn't have been possible in the past, but most of those have still happened over the course of centuries.

There are enormous, unfathomable incentives to come up with better materials and components outside of the home appliance industry, but they have to deal with the same problems and struggle just as much or more.

> Then I firmly believe, under that failure cost, that in under a decade fridges would last 100+ years without maintenance.

Again, you'll need to explain what materials we'll use for this, or how tighter manufacturing tolerances would allow such an enormous increase in longevity, much less without increasing costs astronomically.

Overall I think you're being far too optimistic about how long components which need to run nearly constantly for decades can last even under ideal circumstances. I think you're being unbelievably optimistic in thinking that even if such products were possible they could be done for anywhere even near the price the average fridge costs these days.

> But I do believe you'd agree that there isn't a profit motive in many aspects of our market for tireless improvements?

To a degree, yes, but I also think people who argue that we don't make devices like we used to miss that as a society we don't want the devices we used to.

> And that, even if you think my statements are fantastical, you still may agree that we could do better?

I'd never argue that we can't do better. I will argue that your idea of a fridge (especially a modern one) which lasts 40-50 years (much less over a century) is ludicrous. It's certainly possible you'd have an individual fridge which lasts an incredibly long time without maintenance, but such survivals will always be the rare exception rather than the norm.

Improved manufacturing capability reduces the likelihood of early part failure, and better precision reduces wear on parts which interact. It's one piece of the puzzle. The more precise, the more consistent, the longer lasting. Material strength is inline with this, it's why I showed you the example of a ball point pen ball, which is about precision but also about material strength and material manufacturing purity.

What I've also shown is the past, until now. I've shown a culture still catching up to where we were in the 60s. And from that, I'm extrapolating that materials science makes improvements, and how.

And I'm saying that something like a fridge used to last longer, and it's been 65 years, and now they appear to fail more often. From that, I deduce that fridges should be lasting at least as long, if not longer, and that this is suspicious and indicative of a negative incentive for longevity.

Some materials may need to be replaced, quite assuredly. You seem stuck on the fact that "Wait, we don't have this now, therefore, there's no proof it ever could be". Show me, you say. Prove it. But this is of course unreasonable, for this is not my field, and I am clearly giving my opinion. However, what's happening is that there just isn't much research into longevity. Instead, the research is into short-term suitability, and warranty issues.

You cite that there are incentives in other areas. And indeed there are! But only to a point. There is low incentive to make cars last longer beyond a point, and the same holds true for products for the military. We've abated oxidization to a point, but further research, or more importantly implementation of that research, would only hinder sales on any front.

All that said, I don't think we're going to persuade each other of much beyond what we've said. You want proof, but all I'm willing to give you is deduced proof predicated upon my life experiences. Nothing will emerge beyond that.

> Show me, you say. Prove it. But this is of course unreasonable, for this is not my field, and I am clearly giving my opinion.

This is kinda my point. You don’t seem to be coming at this from a position of much experience in the field but are confidently making assertions about it. You are confidently handwaving away what would be massive advancements in both materials science and manufacturing, all why saying it could result in an affordable fridge which would last for over a century. That’s unrealistic.

We can speculate a lot about advancements which might happen in many decades or even centuries in the future, but it’s foolish to talk about them with confidence, and it’s often irrelevant to the present.

> However, what's happening is that there just isn't much research into longevity.

That is patently false. The field of materials science and several branches of engineering deal with this constantly.

> There is low incentive to make cars last longer beyond a point, and the same holds true for products for the military.

Weren’t you originally trying to make the opposite point by using the B-52 as an analogy?

That is patently false. The field of materials science and several branches of engineering deal with this constantly

Which still isn't much, conpared to if everyone cared.

Weren’t you originally trying to make the opposite point by using the B-52 as an analogy?

The B-52 is managed by the government, and from another era. Just as my Volvo example was.

Compare either to modern variants. Who maintains the F-35? Who profits from poor quality?

> Which still isn't much, conpared to if everyone cared.

This is yet another blind assertion. Please give details about how it isn't being paid attention to much.

> Compare either to modern variants. Who maintains the F-35? Who profits from poor quality?

You keep arguing vague things without actually giving any examples. The F-35 is a vastly more complicated aircraft than the B-52. Please give an example as to which part or parts you're referring to as being low quality in comparison.

Fighters can't be used for nearly as long as a bomber like the B-52 because the threats they face evolve quickly and are much closer. You wouldn't fly an F-14 against a modern fighter because you'd be blasted out of the sky with an air-to-air missile from 50 miles away. A B-52 can attack from quite a ways away or be held off until airspace is under control. A B-2 on the other hand is supposed to be able to fly in unobserved, and thus its service lifetime will be more limited.

https://anycrap.shop/product/bbarnett-s-super-mega-powerful-...

> And how much maintenance?

From what I can find, 50+ man-hours per flight hour, which is pretty far from maintenance free.

Neither Volvos (presumably, a reference to their cars) nor B-52s are maintenance-free, even if they have long service lives with proper maintenance, so I don’t see how either supports your argument that fridges could easily be made to last decades without maintenance.

If a robot costs $50k, lasts 5 years, and does the dishes and laundry every day, I'd consider it.

Isn’t that the dishwasher and the washing machine?

Human flesh and blood is pretty bad at upgrading itself, too. A sapient robot, or one with specific programming, might adapt itself as parts wear out when individual components, limbs, and other odds and ends are separately serviceable.

Cost of human is much higher. Taxes, healthcare, breaks, brain-damage related to their emotional maintenance, safety requirements, etc.

No reason a robot can't work in a dark cave flooded with radon, and that is going to be cheap real estate.

I think it depends on the application. Employees tend to not be free in the 21st century at least.

Have you factored in the ability for humanoid robots to be able to do preventative maintenance and repairs on each other?

In many instances with repairing electronics and home appliances labour is the greatest cost, not the material. Sometimes it's as simple as replacing a 50 cent washer to repair something, or perhaps squirt some lube here or there regularly to prevent something from breaking down.

If it's the same for robot maintenance then robots being able to fix themselves and each other will change the equation on ownership tremendously.

Imagine if everyone had a domestic robot and if it broke down their neighbour's robot could repair it. That would be an extremely user friendly and cheap way to deal with the problem.

This makes a lot of assumptions about the field service potential of humanoid robots. A humanoid robot is so much more complex than something like a washing machine. There are far more things to break. Assuming humanoid robot maintenance will look like general appliance maintenance may not be a robust assumption.

"Replace tiny parts" option - Which parts is the manufacturer making available for purchase and what does the supply chain look like for that? What tools are needed to do the disassembly, part installation, and re-assembly? Can a humanoid robot out in the real world replicate the clean room conditions in which delicate components were assembled then sealed inside some compartment so dust can never get to them? Are we going to put heat guns and soldering irons in the fingertips of every humanoid robot to support self repair? There's going to be problems that can't be resolved with the kinds of tools available in the average household.

"Replace modules / components" option - Having to buy a whole new hand when you really wanted to replace a single finger joint impacts the value proposition of self repair, it's not a 50 cent washer it's a $1000 pre-assembled component. The repair is now definitely doable in the field, at least.

You might also be assuming humanoid robot manufacturers would not work specifically against self-repair. They make more money if you buy a new robot, or you pay them to fix your broken robot. Maybe "fix this other robot" ends up on a list of forbidden tasks the robot will always refuse to do...

That's the right way of thinking about it.

I think that you'd design it to use human tools as a bare minimum, so a soldering station, and a 3d printer, or even milling machines and lathes if needed.

But you're right, it'll be restricted from doing that. So the idea is you buy one, jailbreak it, and then get it to build a copy of itself.

It's like asking a genie for more wishes.

> get it to build a copy of itself.

Where does it get the billion dollar semiconductor fab to make the chips for the copy?

> get it to build a copy of itself.

Get it to assemble a copy of itself from a combination of available parts and anything else that it needs to manufacture from scratch.

What motivation does the manufacturer have to make those parts available to you?

It'll probably come down to a combination of regulation from an entity like the EU and the economic reality that it's easier to make a robot that has OEM parts that a consumer can access out of your supply chain.

You've retreated from "buy one humanoid robot and it can make as many more as you want from scratch, it's like asking a genie for free wishes" to "there could be a regulatory framework that would require the manufacturers of humanoid robots to make a retail parts pipeline that allows your humanoid robot to build another humanoid robot at a cost lower than what the manufacturer would sell one for."

You didn't talk about the cost, but what's the point of having your robot assemble parts that the manufacturer will sell to you, assembled, at a lower price? It only makes sense if it's cheaper.

Forklifts do pretty great

if only battery tech had kept pace with Moore's law

Moore's Law was primarily a tool for arguing with finance guys to let you borrow the enormous amount of money to build the new fab- see, this law says that if you don't let us raise the money, then the other company will- see this straight line? It's inevitable, so give us the money.

We could have chosen that scale of investment in battery technology, certainly, but the finance guys said that it wasn't profitable to invest that much in it. China was willing to invest into this field for national security reasons (the threat was of the USN cutting off oil traffic in the Indian Ocean, well beyond the range of the Chinese military). Semiconductors themselves were the result of (US) national security investment- the Minuteman ICBM guidance system was the first large scale use of IC semiconductors.

Given how quickly battery technology has advanced- and how profitable it has been to build these factories- I think the evidence is that the finance guys were wrong about the profitability and importance of battery research/construction, and the national security investment jump-started the whole thing, just like with semiconductors.

There's been a bit of a falling cost exponential https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline

not quite Moore's but a big part of why we have ebikes, ecars etc.

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