Humanoid, a UK-based robotics firm, could have simply created essentially the most hypnotically sluggish, mind-bendingly boring video of autonomous humanoid robots performing mundane duties for the reason that present period of humanoid robotic hype started. And that’s not a nasty factor. Actually, it’s a pleasant instance of the particular capabilities and limits of those gadgets once they carry out duties autonomously.
Sure, sure non-expert viewers would possibly mistake this video for one in every of David Lynch’s Y2K-era experiments in extraordinarily sluggish pacing, however there’s a cause the strolling robots shuffle round and transfer objects like they’re recovering from surgical procedure: they’re improvising these actions, not being teleoperated or counting on a beforehand programmed and rehearsed routine.
On this video, simply launched right this moment, Humanoid is demonstrating a conceptual system it calls KinetIQ, a mix of interlinked items of AI software program and robotic {hardware}, meant to, theoretically, coordinate and perform complicated duties throughout dwelling and industrial settings. “Every layer treats the layer under as a set of instruments, orchestrating them by way of prompting and power use to realize targets set from above,” in keeping with a descriptive assertion from Humanoid.
If you happen to watch the primary a part of this video and all you see is a robotic in a kitchen doing actually nothing, you’re truly meant to be seeing the robotic as one appendage in a super-entity, conveying the verbal directions it obtained from its human to its counterparts, the warehouse robots with wheels.
And if all you see the robots with wheels doing is taking an eternity to place one (1) package deal of cocoa powder and one (1) bottle of oil in a paper bag, you’re sleeping on the truth that these robots are utterly off-rails, determining—millisecond by millisecond—the way to get that extremely breakable glass bottle into that extremely tear-able grocery bag.
And for those who see the man seize the bag, and also you say, “Hey, why didn’t he simply stroll to the cabinets and get the powder and oil off the shelf himself?” you’re lacking the truth that these robots have been deemed secure sufficient that Humanoid’s attorneys are okay with them exhibiting an individual standing subsequent to them throughout a demo the place they’re not teleoperated.
Added up, it’s not nothing. Actually, for those who squint, it’s an actual achievement.
Nevertheless it also needs to offer you some pause in the case of large guarantees from tech leaders about corporations like Hyundai and Tesla reinventing factories by filling them with hyper-competent humanoid robots. That is unproven expertise, and tech corporations are more and more anxious about that.
So for those who’re watching a video in 2026 the place robots prance, twerk, or make cocktails, what you’re seeing is little greater than a sizzle reel, designed to stimulate wonderment and little else. Otherwise you’re simply lacking the nice print the place it says you’re truly a human-controlled robotic.
If, however, you see a robotic shambling, shuffling round, and struggling to open a dishwasher, concentrate. That boring video would possibly simply inform you one thing about the place this expertise at the moment is.
