Humanoid Robots at work: where are we ?

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the current state, technological challenges, and deployment strategies of humanoid robots in industrial environments, assessing market maturity and operational considerations for large-scale deployment.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of 12 companies, discusses technological hurdles, and explores deployment and operational strategies for humanoid robots in industry.

Findings

Many companies are progressing towards deploying humanoids within 2-3 years.

Operational and maintenance challenges are critical for large-scale deployment.

Pilot testing is essential to assess product maturity and market strategy.

Abstract

Launched by Elon Musk and its Optimus, we are witnessing a new race in which many companies have already engaged. The objective it to put at work a new generation of humanoid robots in demanding industrial environments within 2 or 3 years. Is this objective realistic ? The aim of this document and its main contributions is to provide some hints by covering the following topics: First an analysis of 12 companies based on eight criteria that will help us to distinguish companies based on their maturity and approach to the market; second as these humanoids are very complex systems we will provide an overview of the technological challenges to be addressed; third when humanoids are deployed at scale, Operation and Maintenance become critical and the we will explore what is new with these complex machines; Finally Pilots are the last step to test the feasibility of a new system before mass deployment. This is an important step to test the maturity of a product and the strategy of the humanoid supplier to address a market and two pragmatic approaches will be discussed.