What actually counts as a humanoid robot at this point?

[sharonschmidt]

@choi98 Short answer: A lot of the current wave genuinely is repackaged 2000s and 2010s research (ZMP walking, whole-body control, DARPA-era grasping) combined with two things that weren't available then: cheap high-torque-density actuators and large-scale learned policies. This whole thread is a good reminder how young this field still is.

[matthew43]

Just to be precise about one thing: The labor-substitution narrative gets simplified a lot in pitch decks; the more honest framing right now is 'augmenting understaffed, high-turnover roles' rather than wholesale replacement. Totally unrelated but has anyone else noticed how fast component costs are dropping this year.