Humanoid Robots Are Still Overrated
Clips and takeaways from my time at Pittsburgh Robotics & AI Discovery Day 2025.
It was a brisk Wednesday morning when I woke up, knocked out an hour or so of work for my day job, then hopped in my car with my dad to head down to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. We parked on Penn and walked over, stopping briefly at La Prima to get cappuccinos to-go. Once inside, we entered the show floor as soon as it opened, excited to see some local robot action!
Near the entrance, Seegrid’s autonomous forklift bots were already moving crates around. What a relaxing watch! The bot’s motion is so fluid, and it gently comes to a stop well before running into the folks manning the booth. The application here is obvious: a human doesn’t have to lift that crate, either manually or with a forklift.
Next, we stopped by the Advanced Construction Robots Booth where they were showing off TyBot, a robot that ties horizontal rebar intersections automatically.
Notice no one is present at the controls. It’s identifying intersections that need tied automatically with visual recognition! This thing can be trusted to do 1,200+ ties/hour day or night, rain or shine.
As we passed by the Thoro booth, their autonomous cleaning bot was doing some circuits while staff talked to onlookers.
We didn’t stand there for long, though, as this super cute lil bot at the HEBI booth caught our eyes.
HEBI not only manufactures robots, but also modular robot parts. Each part of this mobile platform bot can be easily attached to other bots for different applications. As we made our way across the show floor, we came across some other modular HEBI parts at work on a very different robot from the CMU Biorobotics Lab.
This snake-shaped robot is able to traverse and clean nasty, muck-filled storm drains much more easily than a human. And because it’s created with modular parts, it can be extended or shortened as needed for the job at hand.
At this point in our journey through the show floor, a thought that had been slowly forming in my head over the course of the morning took full shape: No one actually wants a humanoid robot—people want specialized robots! The primary goal of building a robot to do a task is to have it complete the task at least as well as a human could, if not better. To achieve that goal, the robot does not have to look like a human, and in fact shouldn’t look like a human, as the humanoid shape is terribly inefficient for robots.
This is a fact known for years by manufacturing and logistics companies, and is the exact reason that the convention center was full of specialized, rather than humanoid, bots. Elon Musk and others who are obsessed with putting humanoid robots in the homes of consumers are spurning the results of years of research and innovation in their pursuit of their idea of the future. In defense of this obsession, they argue that the humanoid aesthetic is what people really want, but the data suggest otherwise.
The robot does not have to look like a human, and in fact shouldn’t look like a human, as the humanoid shape is terribly inefficient for robots.
These headline-grabbing futurists would do well to learn from Pittsburgh-based companies and researchers, who are listening and responding to the actual needs and wants of the market. While there may not have been many robots on display that could be used in the average home, those present at the show make workplaces safer for workers across the board. And based on the data, I’d venture to guess that consumers would much rather have a robot dog walk itself than pay for a humanoid robot walk their real dog!
And the folks at the CMU MATT Lab are making robot dogs smarter than ever.
Last but not least, I do want to shout out the only humanoid robot to be found in the convention center, Agility Robotics’ Digit, pictured at the top of this post. It was sadly supine on the ground when we came by, and its caretakers told us it had malfunctioned and needed to recharge. But it does look pretty neat when in action, and not eerily faceless like some other humanoid bots.
There was also a ton of AI stuff there, but I’ll save that for another post. Till next time!
—Austin
My favorite article of yours to date! The humanoid PR frenzy has taken attention away from the robots that have a customer-centric design at their heart and true potential to scale commercialization. I hope more come to this realization!