Famed roboticist says humanoid robot bubble is doomed to burst
In Brief Posted: 11:45 PM PDT · September 26, 2025 Image Credits:Brian Heater Connie Loizos Famed roboticist says humanoid robot bubble is doomed to burst Renowned roboticist Rodney Brooks has a wake-up call for investors pouring billions into humanoid robot startups: you’re wasting your money. Brooks, who co-founded iRobot and spent decades at MIT, is particularly skeptical of companies like Tesla and Figure trying to teach robots dexterity by showing them videos of humans doing tasks. In a new essay, he calls this approach “pure fantasy thinking.” The problem? Human hands are incredibly sophisticated, packed with about 17,000 specialized touch receptors that no robot comes close to matching. While machine learning transformed speech recognition and image…
