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Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: Why are people still putting so much effort into making humanoid robots? I understand investment in robotics in general, I just find this particular little branch of that tree to be a bit mystifying. It seems to get a lot more investment than it seems to be worth, to me. Is there some reason to think "humanoid-ness" is a particularly useful property for robots to exhibit?

Edit to add: Thanks for all the responses about how the world is already engineered for human-shaped things. That makes sense to me! And it wasn't really on my radar. Consider my thinking on this updated :)

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Being able to operate in spaces designed for humans and being able to operate things designed for humans. You can have other form factors - and indeed we do in the vacuum robots - but they can't generally interact with the environment the same way we do.

One reason I saw people talking about is that ergonomics is designed on behalf of human, so humanoid robot can just fit into everything smoothly.

Althought I would argue that 4 arms + 4 legs will be way more useful then only 2.

The reason I've been told is that the built world is made for humans. You gain access to places to work via vehicles, doors, and ladders, etc... that are made for humans.

Mu guesses:

* A lot of engineering in low skill labor infrastructure is already designed around humans

* More marketable to the mainstream

* Less intimidating than a giant steel arm for other workers

The world is designed around humans, so a humanoid bot can replace humans in all scenarios instead of many specialized bots. (Or so the thinking goes)

Media attention. You would have never heard of the company otherwise.

> Why are people still putting so much effort into making humanoid robots?

You might not believe it, but as someone in the field myself, most of the time it is because both investors AND senior management are the old generation (call them boomers/genX if you like) and those prefer to see things that resemble what they watched on scifi movies back in the day, so many cases I witnessed where we bring a better UGV design, reliable, and efficient, then it gets turned down in favor of another UGV that looks like Johnny 5 with eyes (aka PTZ camera) on top, “yeah!! This looks cooler!!” And it gets approved..

I wondered whether this was part of it. "People with lots of money think it's cool" explains a lot of stuff :)

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