[ndm000]

When steam and coal engines gave way to gas and electric engines in factories, it took decades before factories were reconfigured to adjust to the smaller sized engines that didn't require one major axle running through the entire factory. As a consequence the first gas engines were huge - over time they shrunk. I bet the same will happen with robotics, where humanoid will be the primary form factor at first for general tasks, then more efficient forms will emerge as processes are updated.

[berkes]

These efficiënt forms are there. In use. Proven. Have been for decades.

Cranes, carts, lorries, conveyor belts (with vision), my robot vacuum cleaner, my bread baking machine, a car wash, a dishwasher, the ticket gates at the underground, the coffee machine at our office and so on.

[zarzavat]

Yet, there are still millions of humans working in factories.

There is value to the human form, our versatility and adaptability.

A machine that replicated a human would have incredible economic value (though not for the people whose jobs it replaced). A machine that exceeded a human in versatility, e.g. by having more arms, even more so.

[berkes]

> still millions of humans working in factories

Yes, there are. But that's not caused by lack of humanoid robots, but because these humans are rediculously cheap.

There's absolutely no way that automation and tech can undercut (effective) slave labor.Though already this is happening: your tshirts and socks are probably not hand-knitted by "Bangladeshi children" or Chinese "prisoners", but by machines tailor-made (pun intended) for t-shirt and sock-knitting. This is happening slowly, and in the supply chain there's still loads of manual labor - cotton picked and processed for these socks is more and more automated, but still requires armies of cheap farm-hands.

And then it's really hard to undercut the price of cheap "western" labor with full automation in many sectors. Part of that is due to some form of 90/10 rule: the last 10% of automation is magnitudes more expensive. And many automation leads to a higher TCO, as the people programming, maintaining and optimizing the robots are far more expensive than an "army" of low-wage workers.

Humanoid robots may be an answer in some future, but currently and in near future will certainly not solve these economics. If ever.