Humanoid-universe.com

<t>Pretty much this. One thing to add:

Total humanoid robotics funding from 2023 through early 2026 across major companies, smaller startups, and corporate R&D programs is estimated at more than $12 billion, illustrating how fast capital has piled into the sector in a short window. 1X's NEO ...

@thomasmitchell Speaking from personal experience here, AgiBot reportedly sold around 5,168 units, putting it roughly in the same commercial volume range as Unitree among Chinese manufacturers, and worth watching alongside the more internationally recognized Chinese players.

<t>@emilyperez This is a great summary, thanks.

It's common for a single humanoid to mix actuator types by joint - harmonic drives or hybrid geared actuators at the hips and shoulders where sustained torque matters most, and lower-ratio QDD-style actuators at ankles and knees where ...

<t>Follow-up question though -

Depth sensing range and reliability both degrade outdoors in direct sunlight for most structured-light and active stereo cameras, since the ambient IR washes out the projected pattern - it's a real limitation for humanoids intended for anything beyond indoor ...

<t>Can I ask a dumb follow-up -

Tactile skin arrays have improved a lot, but 'good enough to matter' really depends on the task - coarse contact detection across a large area is fairly mature, while fine, high-resolution force distribution sensing (like a human fingertip) is still the harder ...

<t>@vyoung Respectfully, I think this undersells it a bit.

Force/torque sensors near the ankle give a direct read on ground reaction forces, which is valuable for balance control, but they add cost, a failure point, and routing complexity right at a joint that already takes the most mechanical ...

@jwang Agreed, and I'd add: Vibration is one of the most underrated sources of noisy IMU and tactile readings - mounting matters as much as sensor quality, and a poorly isolated mount can add more noise than the sensor's own datasheet specs would suggest.

<t>Respectfully, I think this undersells it a bit.

Transitioning from industrial automation into humanoid-specific roles is a increasingly common and viable path, since a lot of the underlying skills (motion control, safety systems, real-time software) transfer directly, even though the specific ...

<t>@chloe_jack This matches what I've seen too.

In the UK, base salaries for robotics roles reportedly range from around £50,000 for new graduates up to roughly £200,000 for senior whole-body-control or reinforcement-learning specialists - a notably wide band reflecting how specialized the top ...

<t>@jonathan_tana Yeah, this tracks with what I've read as well.

A whole-body control engineer's day-to-day work is a mix of formulating and tuning constrained optimization problems, debugging why a controller behaves differently on hardware than in simulation, and a surprising amount of time ...