I have said it numerous times in the past 3-4 years. I believe robotics ( not just humanoids ) will be a bigger thing / threat than AI. And currently China is at least 5 years ahead of rest of the world.
I think people will be shocked when robots will be better at things that people train their whole lives for. For example, in the near future, a robot will be able to completely disassemble a car and put it back together completely autonomously. The polymathic understanding of vast amounts of information combined with physical dexterity and ability to work 24/7 will enable all sorts of wild things. The robot will even be able to take a huge pile of disorganized parts from a dissassembled car, and still put it back together. No normally talented person could reasonably be expected to pick a random screw off a pile of all the parts of a car and know where it would go in the assembly.
I think we'll soon see a robot arm that costs $2,000-5,00 and will be trainable/deployable in a single day. THIS is what will crush most labor around the world.
To be fair, reusable rockets and electric cars people wanted to drive were not in much supply prior to those companies. Then again, the boring company is probably only at a parity at best with other miners.
I’m still not quite sure why we want humanoid robots and not something more useful or purpose-built.
Agreed, the hard part about robots is the controller.
We have been able to build robot bodies for decades, but we still don't really know how to build a robot mind. You need better AI than we currently have for that.