What's the point of these humanoid robots? Why would people buy them?
Humanoid robots work well because we designed our modern world to be easily accessible to humans. Yeah treads, 4 legged or wheeled robots would be better design wise up until they have to climb a flight of stairs, open doors or walk on narrow walkways. And they're new and still in development, as their A.I and capabilities improve, their uses are basically infinite. You'll be surprised at how many low skilled jobs involve someone being there just to do things like flip a switch, turn a valve, tighten a few screws. One idea I have for a use for a human robot could be something as simple as ensuring all the doors and windows are closed, all the air-con are shut down, switching off the lights after closing hours.. I say that because it used to be part of my job, just running around making sure all the windows were shut, turning off the lights and air-conditioning in the building as we closed for the night, a moneky could have done that part of my job if we could train it not to shit on the floor.
You might as well ask why all this companies are developing robot dogs too, Xiaomi seems to be developing them purely as use for pets???
Until recently, major Chinese companies outside of maybe Huawei spent a relatively small % of their revenue on R&D. New technology trends come entirely from R&D so if you’ve got nobody working on it, you’re naturally going to be a follower.
I call bullshit. Humanoid robots are not a new technology. They just gained a lot more attention over the last 2 years with all the hype around Tesla and Atlas. They are also plenty examples of robots in mythology, aka the "golem", artificial humans and robots in sci-fiction, they are not a new concept. 15 years ago there were walking robots. Humanoid robotics would be quite high on the top of the most promising techologny to develop, especially when combined with the recent developments in batteries, computer vision, A.I etc etc that can boost a robot's capabilites vastly.
And they happily decided to develop robotic dogs, for the last 6 years in fact, why invest in robot dogs as pets and not humanoid robots for general use purposes? Maybe it's because Boston Dynamic released Spot 7 years ago and Altas didn't go mainstream until like 2 years ago.... which was around the same time that all this chinese companies suddenly decided that human robots were a good thing to develop.
It's like deciding not to invest into fusion energy until some fusion plant in another country is already pumping gigawatts into their grid, not to invest in A.I until some country is using AGI to take over the world, not investing into room temperature superconductor until another country has already built an entire grid out of it. It's one of those vague sci-fi techologny that's many years away but with so much potential that you still dump a ton of money and manpower into it anyway wayyy before it can hit the market and start making money, because the tiny chance it could work is worth the investment. Just like how there's billions being pumped in on fusion energy even though most people think that it's gonna to be 2040+ before we see the very first energy positive fusion reactor pumping single joule into the grid. BD worked on Altas for 15 years before it got as good as it did after all.
Like I said with my ChatGTP example, chinese companies had to wait for ChatGTP to get hyped, GTP-3 which released a year earlier wasn't quite so popular within mainstream media but still quite an impressive example of what the transformer architecture and LLM could do, but not much chinese companies gave a shit. But suddenly ChatGTP comes out, it was such a big deal even my 60 year old parents knew about it and suddenly every private chinese tech company wanted their own LLM and was pouring in billions on A.I development. Why do they have to wait for shit to hit the mainstream news to do anything? If they actually gave a shit about their field of research, GTP-3 or even GTP-2 should have been enough for them to take some serious action on LLM and then they wouldn't be years behind.
The West spends relatively much more on R&D both because it can afford to, being wealthier countries, and because they’ve long abandoned low margin labor intensive work, which Chinese companies are just starting to evolve past.
For companies like Xiaomi or a commerical consumer level robot companu like Unitree? The former would have had the funds to invest in a side project like that even 10 years ago and the latter would have to invest an obivous area like human like robots, it's like being a internet company and not investing in software development. Both of them found the funds to invest in robot dogs afterall, why not a humanoid robot too?
So it’s mainly a stage in development effect. China is still a developing country.
And they're going to stay a developing country for much longer if they keep chasing the bandwagon and not investing early in obvious techologny. And this argument doesn't make sense, they have been developing robot dogs for longer and they hold less potential than a human robot if you want to argue about lack of funds is what is preventing them. Then they wouldn't have even bothered with the robot dogs. Maybe it's because Boston Dynamic made Spot famous 7 years prior...
I'm struggling to see their use in comparison to a run of the mill robotic arm, on rails if required in a manufacturing context. Humans are adaptable and multi-purpose, but in a factory you only really need a few tasks done very well, which a robotic arm would soundly beat a humanoid robot in both cost and consistency.
The point is the use in human designed areas like houses, schools etc. Which are designed for humans. And not for large treaded or wheeled robots running around.