AI Robots — The next economy. Let’s Talk Robots.

Is a robot just a programmable machine? Or are they more? 

From the Czech language: “Robata” means ‘forced labour’.

Robots use motors to move. Humans use muscles. Robots come in any shape (e.g., a robotic arm, a vacuum cleaner, a drone). Robots can be minute, or they can be towering giants. When robots look like a human, they are called humanoid robots. When they can make decisions on their own, (like a Roomba vacuum cleaner), they may be called smart robots. When they can learn from experience, learn on the job and get better at their jobs on their own without having to be reprogrammed, they are called autonomous robots.

There are actual classifications for robots. Some robots are for industrial use, others for domestic use, some are service robots, medical robots, military robots, educational robots, co-bots, swarm robots, companion robots, soft robots, shape-shifting robots and robots for exploration purposes. 

Let’s talk about humanoids and autonomous robots.

Not all robots are humanoids, but all humanoids are robots. 

Humanoids are explicitly designed with a human-like, bi-pedal structure.

Unlike mechanical robots, which are often optimized for speed and precision in specific, repetitive tasks, such as manufacturing, the primary goal of a humanoid (as a generalist) is to interact with human-centered environments— spaces built for humans—without requiring significant modification to that environment. Humanoids use sensors like gyroscopes to maintain balance and cameras to navigate, similar to human senses. Humanoid robots mimic human movement, expressions, and even speech, making them useful in customer service, research, and, lately, companionship.

Autonomous robots 

Autonomous means no humans in the loop; no remote operator. The general purpose autonomous humanoid robot makes decisions on its own by way of neural networks and analyzes training data rather than relying on explicit, manual programming. They are controlled by a neural network— mirroring the human brain's complexity and efficiency. They have catalysed innovations in machine learning and the result is more efficient robotic systems, all due to onboard intelligence. They are characterised by not just doing one task really well, but doing almost every task a human can do.  A single neural network controls the entire robot: hands, arms, torso, legs, feet; full-body coordination combined with real-time planning and displaying dynamic responses to unexpected situations.

These robots are not a tool anymore, but more like a being, a new species on the planet. They look and act humanlike, but are different from humans and have their own will. They have their own character, their own goals, different capabilities, and different desires from humans. They are not complementary to humans, therefore not co-bots, because they can do almost everything better, faster and cheaper. When one robot learns something, all the other robots in the fleet all over the world, know immediately how to do it. Every robot in the fleet learns from every other robot’s experience. Potentially when one robot masters folding laundry, or assembling a car part, every robot on the planet instantly knows how to fold laundry or assemble parts of a car. Here’s why this matters: neural nets learn from experience, not instructions.

From the overwhelming world wide interest in autonomous humanoid robots, it is clear that this is the technology of the future, therefore we have compiled a wish list for the ideal features of what would be desirable in a robot: 

• Not pre-programmed, but self learning with recursive self-improvement, a data-gathering machine;
• Full end-to-end neural network;
• Able in before-unseen places doing real, useful general work for days on end;
• Software, repair and maintenance updated remotely;
• Basically a human in a bodysuit;
• Recall and upgrade of units;
• Broad availability;
• General purpose—meaning integrated in all facilities and able to adapt to commercial, industrial and domestic settings: factories, warehouses. hospitals, senior care facilities, mining operations, security and surveillance jobs as well as logistics operations. It can do your laundry, cleans your house, organizes your kitchen, runs errands, looks after the sick and elderly;
• Unseen environments: means you can drop the robot into a random Airbnb or factory floor it’s never visited, and it figures out how to navigate and work there.
• Light weight;
• Soft-wrapped body; 
• Shape-shifting (why not throw that one into the mix as well, while we’re at it);
• Affordable for the end consumer—leasable by the hour;
• Energy efficient;
• Long time horizons, meaning hours, days, weeks of continuous operation;
• Continuous monitoring of performance in real-time;
• Safety validation: in robotics real-world applications and operations in complex, unstructured environments, safety is a real concern. A humanoid robot in your home is around your kids, your pets, your elderly parents. If it drops a pot of boiling water, that’s catastrophic. If it steps on your cat, that’s catastrophic. If it gets hacked and streams your private conversations to the internet, that’s catastrophic.
• It goes without saying that the more autonomous they are, the more uncontrollable, therefore: privacy validation; reliability validation.

Conclusion

Will it be possible to have many robotic classifications rolled into one for your own private use? Well, nothing seems impossible in the AI domain anymore; new possibilities seem to arise the minute old ones are realised. 

These phenomena are actually being constructed as we speak, in more than one country around the world: South Korea, Singapore, Germany, Japan, China, and the leader in AI-integrated humanoid robots at the moment: the United States: “We don’t ship slop.”

Happy robot shopping.