Humanoid robots are robots designed in the shape of a human. The reason for designing robots in a human form is that humans are the most advanced beings on Earth, and everything created through artificial means is designed and built according to human living scenarios, functional needs, social relationships, and various other aspects. Humanoid robots are evidently more compatible with human environments in terms of spatial adaptability.
The core breakthrough in humanoid robot technology lies in “dexterous intelligence”; the intelligence refers to the AI brain, while dexterity refers to the agile hands.
The AI brain is the core intelligent control system of the robot, supporting its perception, decision-making, learning, and interaction, serving as the “central nervous system”. It consists of a hardware computing platform and a software algorithm system, including models, algorithms, and data management systems, enabling the robot to understand natural language, recognize visual information, and practice autonomous interaction with humans in their world, observing human behavior and conducting reinforcement learning from it. This will be the most explosive breakthrough point in future AI applications.
The dexterous hands of humanoid robots mimic the agility of human hands, composed of fingers, joints, drives, transmissions, tactile, and control perception systems, belonging to the category of “humanoid-level flexible manipulation” as a bionic end effector.
When humanoid robots interact with the physical world, they need to possess a high degree of dexterity. For instance, the dexterous hands must be capable of grasping various objects, including cups, clothes, eggs, spoons, paper, and even threading a needle, requiring precise perception and force.
Therefore, dexterous hands currently face significant challenges in mechanical engineering, constrained by multiple technical difficulties in mechanical design, materials, and perception control, and commercial mass production will still require some time.
Of course, humanoid robots also face energy consumption issues; the energy required by robots is beyond imagination, but current battery technology has significant bottlenecks. As battery capacity increases and energy density rises, safety hazards will also increase, leading to a higher risk of fire or even explosion.
At the same time, the common problem of mechanical wear in humanoid robots has no better solution. Humans are born with a natural self-repair mechanism and sophisticated energy replenishment methods, but robots do not have this. The interiors of humanoid robots are filled with high-precision components, and during movement and task processing, mechanical wear is inevitable, requiring constant inspection, maintenance, and updates.
Tesla’s FSD V14.2 is already very intelligent; the autonomous driving AI brain will eventually be directly transplanted into the Optimus robot. In the physical world and through reinforcement learning with human interaction, AI will form a breakthrough point, and the turning point may still require three to five years. Relatively speaking, solving challenges in AI will be much faster than addressing the difficulties in mechanical hardware engineering.