Are the Humanoids Here to Stay?

Humanoids might finally solve the “brownfield” problem that plagues robotic adaptation, and recent breakthroughs in multi-modal transformers and diffusion models might actually make it happen.

Nikolaus Correll
Towards Data Science
10 min readMar 1, 2024

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Not a week goes by without a flurry of humanoid companies releasing a new update. Optimus can walk? Digit has just moved an empty tote? So has Figure! It also seems that real companies are finally getting interested. Starting with Tesla, humanoids are now “working” at Amazon and BMW, from which it is only a short way to our households and gardens.

A humanoid cleaning up (its own?) mess while preparing a meal. The humanoid form factor holds tremendous promise for seamless integration into existing value creation processes. Image: author via miramuseai.net

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Nikolaus is a Professor of Computer Science and Robotics at the University of Colorado Boulder, robotics entrepreneur, and consultant.