[HnUser12]

If the goal is to commoditize, does it not make sense to have a humanoid that you can sell to individual households? Not everyone would want to have a purpose-built robot arm in their kitchen. But this may be an easier sell if it works well.

[viraptor]

What's the point of a humanoid in that case? Light frame on rollers would be much safer. There are rolling designs that can deal with stairs too. Humanoids waste lots of energy just balancing themselves and use precise adjustments (toes do quite a bit of work here). And if they fail at balancing, you've got tens to hundreds kilograms of equipment falling through a wall / on your possessions / on somebody. Equipment that may decide to start getting up in that situation and cause more issues...

[conductr]

I think the point is your humanoid is effectively as capable as you. If that was the only job worth solving, purpose built makes sense, but a general human form can (in theory) serve any purpose which is kind of the holy grail.

I don’t need to buy a roomba or the lawnmower version or hire a pool service or cleaning service, etc. if this one device can do it all. That makes this problem space extremely valuable. And the human form is a known form that can do all these things.

Even the things like food delivery robots, and food delivery fees of all types, grocery store pickers, some gig workers, etc. they kind of go away if I can tell this humanoid to run to McDonald’s and get me a #2