Six Risks From Humanoid Robots, IROS Debate on Humanoids and Jobs
Best papers from Humanoids 2025, stealth startups and investments
One of the most fascinating and under-explored aspects of humanoid robotics is how humanoids straddle the risks and opportunities of both digital and physical agents. For years I have studied reports on the ethical, social, emotional and economic issues for both robots and AI, and in general the robotics reports focus on physical safety, to the exclusion of all else, while the AI reports focus on emotional impact, whether from biased algorithms to digital manipulation.
A Pathway Study for Future Humanoid Standards, the report from the IEEE RAS Humanoid Standards Study Group, chaired by Aaron Prather from ASTM, evaluates the risks and opportunities across the digital and physical worlds. While it may not address the impact of humanoids across the full social and economic spectrum (ie. jobs!), at least the report highlights that the risks of humanoids are both virtual and physical.
Wish me luck! I’ll be joining a great robotics debate at IROS this week “Humanoids Will Soon Replace Most Human Workers: True or False?”
Time: Wednesday, 12:20-1:20 PM (CST)
Location: Exhibition Hall 4D
Participants:
XingXing Wang (Unitree Robotics)
Shigeki Sugano (Waseda University)
Hong Qiao (Chinese Academy of Sciences) or Huichan Zhao (Tsinghua University)
Andra Keay, (Silicon Valley Robotics)
Yu Sun (EiC, IEEE Trans on Automation Science and Engineering)
Tamim Asfour (Prof. of Humanoid Robotics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
Ken Goldberg (UC Berkeley, Moderator)
Format: A spirited Oxford-style debate on the future of humanoid robotics in the workforce.
Then join us at the Expo, the Industrial or Entrepreneurship Forums on Thursday!
COMMUNITY NEWS
Best Paper Awards and Finalists from Humanoids 2025
Best Oral Paper Award Winner
181: Design of a 3-DOF Hopping Robot with an Optimized Gearbox: An Intermediate Platform Toward Bipedal Robots Choe, JongHun; Kim, Gijeong; Kim, Hajun; Kang, Dongyun; Kim, Min-Su; Park, Hae-Won Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Korea, South
Best Oral Paper Award Finalist
19: Physically Consistent Humanoid Loco-Manipulation Using Latent Diffusion Models Taouil, Ilyass; Zhao, Haizhou; Dai, Angela; Khadiv, Majid Technical University of Munich (TUM) Germany
103: Geometry-Aware Predictive Safety Filters on Humanoids: From Poisson Safety Functions to CBF Constrained MPC Bena, Ryan; Bahati, Gilbert; Werner, Blake; Yang, Lizhi; Cosner, Ryan; Ames, Aaron California Institute of Technology United States of America
Mike Stilman Award Winner
183: From Screen to Stage: Kid Cosmo, a Life-Like, Torque-Controlled Humanoid for Entertainment Robotics Liu, Havel; Zhu, Mingzhang; Flores Alvarez, Arturo Moises; Lo, Yuan Hung; Ku, Conrad; Parres, Federico Parres; Quan, Justin; Togashi, Colin; Navghare, Aditya Shridhar; Wang, Quanyou; Hong, Dennis UCLA United States of America
Mike Stilman Award Finalist
209: Development of a Transformable Robot with Wire-Differential Steering Ankle Joints for Bipedal and Tri-Swerve Locomotion Hirai, Jin; Hiraoka, Takuma; Tada, Hiromi; Makabe, Tasuku; Kojima, Kunio; Okada, Kei The University of Tokyo Japan
212: Walking, Rolling, and Beyond: First-Principles and RL Locomotion on a TARS-Inspired Robot Sripada, Aditya; Warrier, Abhishek Carnegie Mellon University United States of America
Best Interactive Paper Winner
29: Design and Experiment of Hydraulic Driven Deformable Wheeled Biped Robot Li, Xu; Zhang, Aobo; Yu, Haoyang; Feng, Haibo; Zhang, Songyuan; FU, YILI Harbin Institute of Technology China
Best Interactive Paper Finalist
198: Motion Generation and Burden Evaluation of Sitting-Up Assistance by Humanoid Robot Based on Human Caregiver Movements Arai, Yoshiki; Himeno, Tomoya; Yuda, Issei; Hiraoka, Takuma; Kojima, Kunio; Okada, Kei The University of Tokyo Japan
116: Design and Development of a Remotely Wire-Driven Walking Robot Hattori, Takahiro; Kawaharazuka, Kento; Okada, Kei The University Of Tokyo Japan
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Robotics News
These Well-Funded AI Startups Are Building Humanoid Robots In Stealth
Flush with hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding, Rhoda AI and Genesis AI are developing humanoids they hope can go head-to-head with robots from Figure AI and Tesla.
“After the success of large language models, investors are optimistically looking to robotics as the next big thing and that’s driving a lot of hype,” said Kane Hsieh, general partner at Root Ventures, who invests in hardware startups. “But the part that feels odd is going from going from cool, promising research to doing 100 million dollar seed rounds.”
Humanoid robots: Crossing the chasm from concept to commercial reality - McKinsey
Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock says the robotics company is building ‘a new species’ - Business Insider
Korea’s Lonely Older Adults Find Warmth In Talking Robots - Korea Times
ABB Softbank Robotics Deal Is Another European Retreat - Bloomberg
Robotics Events
Oct 21-23 - FIRA USA, Woodland CA - (use our code “NAOMISHISAIKEGUESTS” for 20% discount)
Oct 27-30 - ROSCON Singapore -
Thursday Oct 30 - Women in Robotics event at CL MV
Wed Nov 5 - Bots&Beer in SF or CL MV - tbc
Nov - Online Robotics Manufacturing Workshop - tbc
Sat Nov 22 - Robot Party and Brazilian BBQ at CL MV
Wed Dec 3 - Bots&Beer in SF or CL MV - tbc
Wed Dec 10 - Robotics Investment Summit and Manufacturing Workshop
Humanoids Summit - Dec 11-12
Join the organizing team at Silicon Valley Robotics - bots&beer@svrobo.org
