Humanoid Robots Are the Next Phase of the AI Hype Cycle
The machines can jump, dance and go viral, but turning them into useful workers remains far more difficult — and expensive — than their boosters suggest.
Illustration: Huanhuan Wang for Bloomberg
The human hand is a miracle of hardware and software. “It’s got multiple kinds of grasp in it. It can handle a variety of objects just exquisitely,” Nicolaus Radford says, running his palm down his cheek and curling his fingers into his beard. “It’s incredibly sensate; it feels really well.” Despite having practically no muscles — just tendons connecting the ends of the fingers to fibers in the arm — “it’s so delicate that you can put a Swiss watch together, and you can also swing a mallet.”
“The hand,” Radford says, “is hypercompetitive.”