Wer wird das Rennen um einen humanoiden Roboter gewinnen?

From the article

Unitree is just one of dozens of companies around the world developing robots that have a human form.

The potential is huge – for business it promises a workforce that doesn’t need holidays or pay rises.

It could also be the ultimate domestic appliance. After all, who wouldn’t want a machine that could do the laundry and stack the dishwasher.

But the technology is still some way off. While robotic arms and mobile robots have been common in factories and warehouses for decades, conditions in those workplaces can be controlled and workers can be kept safe.

Introducing a humanoid robot to a less predictable environment, like a restaurant or a home, is a much more difficult problem.

To be useful humanoid robots would have to be strong, but that also makes them potentially dangerous – simply falling over at the wrong time could be hazardous.

So much work needs to be done on the artificial intelligence that would control such a machine.

„The AI simply has not yet reached a breakthrough moment,“ a Unitree spokesperson tells the BBC.

„Today’s robot AI finds basic logic and reasoning – such as for understanding and completing complex tasks in a logical way – a challenge,“ they said.

At the moment their G1 is marketed at research institutions and tech companies, who can use Unitree’s open source software for development.

The billionaire class

I’m not trying to sound alarmist, but if I haven’t said it enough: this is a grave threat to everyone who depends on work being available, in the same degree today, to afford survival.

It’ll go the way of the roomba, at the end of the day you will have thousand companies making their own bot for bottom dollar once the general trick of how to make and use them has been figured out. It’s not the sort of product you could maintain monopoly or duopoly in.