This Is Robotics: Radio News #35

The Wild, Wild World of Humanoid Robots 2025
The Rise of Humanoid Robots in 2021: How We Got to Now

Good fortune has befallen humanoid robotics in this fast-paced year for humanoids 2025.

Join us for the journey to Now! That journey arguably can be said to have begun in August of 2021 with the emergence of high-octane influencer, Elon Musk, and his introduction of Optimus to the heralded list of humanoid names.

Surely, humanity has been at the chase for a humanoid likeness for centuries. Modernists may insist that WABOT-1, built in 1970 by Ichiro Kato at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, was the first humanoid robot. And they’d be correct. Since WABOT-1, the list of humanoids has been chock-full of exemplary technology and technologists. Not to diminish the robust efforts of any precursors, but all of it seemed to be progressing in slow motion and a bit of anonymity until the world’s richest man, with a half-dozen spectacular moonshots under his belt, suddenly jumped into humanoid prominence.

ChatGP-3 in 2022 breathed a new kind of life into humanoids as code capitulated to GenAI prompts. NVIDIA’s Jetson Thor in 2024, dubbed the “Universal Robotics Computer” offered up a humanoid compute force never seen prior to Thor. And then China’s DeepSeek created a platform for embodied AI that was a simple, cheap, and effective doorway for humanoids to enter and learn from the physical world of humans.

Episode #35 of This Is Robotics takes a look at this wild, wild journey for humanoids that’s just beginning.

Please join us in this journey together as Elon Musk, Tom Dohmke, Jensen Huang, Peter Diamandis, Emad Mostaque, Yann LeCun, and Eric Jang build out the 2025 landscape of humanoid robotics.

Heartfelt Thanks for Making This Is Robotics the #1 Global Robotics News Podcast

This Is Robotics: End-Of-Year Program, 30 December 2024
What Was the Most Important Story in Robotics for 2024?

Yes, there Was Only One.

And no, it wasn’t bipedal humanoids. Not by a long shot. Not as long as there’s gravity and Mother Nature to contend with.

The hype and investment millions going into bipedal humanoid robots these days feels a lot like the over-hyped, over-heated, craziness of the multi-billion-dollar market that was self-driving cars back in 2009-2017. Remember?

Google invested $1.1 billion, so say recent Waymo court documents. Yikes!

The single, most important news story for 2024 is now changing our lives and futures.

Please join us. 30 December 2024 for that news story’s reveal.

“You’re Going to Love What You Hear!

Heartfelt Thanks for Making This Is Robotics the #1 Global Robotics News Podcast

PITTSBURGH: HOW ROBOTICS SAVED A CITY
By 2000, 29 steel companies in Pittsburgh had declared bankruptcy, cratering its middleclass, and any future upon which the great city might have had hopes to grow and thrive. How did robotics bring the city back from the dead?

Pittsburgh: From Dying Steel Town to Global Robotics Hub by Henry Lenard

IS THIS THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMRS?
Unless you’ve been under a rock somewhere, you’ve undoubtedly heard the noise of their wheels and the rush of their whizzing by you, either on TV news, YouTube, or better, in person. What you’re seeing and hearing is the future arriving in a hurry. They’re called AMRs, robotics newest celebrities, autonomous mobile robots.

GLOBAL ROBOTICS PATENTS: THE PATENT WARS!
Patent activity is a useful indicator of technological progress and innovation in robotics. “Between 2005 and 2019, 72,618 robotics patents were granted worldwide.” Who is leading, who is on the rise, and who are the also-rans?

In other words, the patent wars! Who’s winning? Let’s take a look.

THREE BREAKTHROUGHS: CAPSULE ROBOTICS, THE ALL-ROBOT AUTO PLANT, AND THE DEXTEROUS, FIVE-FINGERED COBOT HAND
Instrument-free, noninvasive diagnosis and therapy inside the digestive tract will be performed through a new branch of robotics: capsule robotics.

In Japan, it seems that only “smart” robots need apply for work at Nissan’s brand new “intelligent” auto plant.

What’s the next big breakthrough tech for the cobot. How about a dexterous, sophisticated five-fingered hand?

Our Annual Tribute to Pittsburgh and Its People
Heartwarming & Inspirational Holiday Story
The Fall & Rise of Pittsburgh
From Dying Steel Town to Global Robotics Hub

Heartfelt Thanks for Making This Is Robotics the #1 Global Robotics News Podcast