Robotics class

Humanoids won’t take your job (yet)

If you follow robotics on Twitter, it looks like humanoids are everywhere.

In reality, there are very few in the world, and even fewer doing real work.

Reality is, most are just expensive ornaments, that barely even hide it, many only ever get showcased standing still, sitting down or very limited movement and innumbers, may seem like they are everywhere but reality barely any are in the world right now. Counting humanoids is surprisingly hard — because many are closer to research platforms or mobile manipulators than true anthropomorphic workers.

Recently a report emerged, showcasing the numbers, 16k although depending how you class a ‘humanoid’ or who you believe, its not 100% accurate, agibot for example, has many sales made of of ‘Semi’ humanoids, Dual armed, wheel based mobile manipulator

Although gihlgihts issue, much data is private, whats classed as a ‘humanoid’ varies and most data is rough estimations

Overall, the leader in terms of shipping, Unitree disputed this, claiming when it comes to pure humanoids, the anthropomorphic, 2 legs, 2 arms, full body class, they are head with 6500 units shipped

When you look past the demos and count what’s actually shipping, a pattern appears:

China is putting humanoids into many hands. The US is preparing to put humanoids into specific jobs.

Although it leaves a clear trend, dominated in chinese production, difference, chinese teams building and getting them out there now, where as us teams heavy on develpment and planning big deployments with partners

Chinese vs American difference

Why, because most are in these nations.

The most common model you’ll see if you’re watching the humanoid space, the Unitree G1, a cheap, light slightly below full size model used and supported by researchers and small teams all over the world, even most of the current attempts at robot fighting use these models

Agibot produces a variety of models and are achieving substantial production

While many of the american leaders are gearing up for substantial production and deployments with industrial partners.

E.g Boston dynamics atlas its entire production run for 2026 is already sold and accounted for. And its majority owner Hyundai Motor Group has plans to build a robot factory that can ship 30,000 robots a year. Atlas Humanoid Robots Production ‘Fully Committed’ For 2026, Factory Will Build 30,000 Per Year

Agility robotics digit, Already commercially deployed and the first, Digit has moved over 100,000 totes in deployment, and partnered with mercado libre ‘Mercado Libre: The "Amazon of Latin America’ for

1x Planning to deploy up to 10,000 NEO humanoids between 2026 and 2030.

U.S. pilot programs begin next year and also announced pre order for home operations, although won’t be fully autonmous and will have option for teleop control;

Big difference, getting the hardware out thee, in many team so iterate and improve while scaling production

at the same time, everyone wants to grab attention, flex the flashy demos, attract funding and claim to be on track to produce a bajillion robots. reality, most will fall short, although there are car manafctueres getting invovled, they can do it bla bla

but alas, if you made it this far, feel free to subscribe to recieve newsletters, intelligence and reports on not just humanoids but the greater robotics movement, across industries and across teh stack