Latest news with #4NE-1
Forbes
01-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Humanoid Robot Mass Adoption Will Start In 2028, Says Bank Of America
Neura Robotics shows off 4NE-1, a humanoid robot, in an outdoor ad campaign Humanoid robots will begin a mass adoption trend for commercial use as early as 2028, according to a new Bank of America research report. Annual shipments could hit 1 million by 2030, with a production cost of just $17,000 per unit. 'BofA Global Research believes the adoption of humanoid robots will follow a three-stage development trajectory in the coming decade, starting from industrial and logistic applications, then on to business services, and finally to household use,' a company representative told me via email. 'In the long run, BofA Global Research expects the total units in ownership for humanoid robots to reach an estimated three billion units globally by 2060.' That three billion unit projection is based on three assumptions: According to the report, the first mass commercializations period for humanoid robots will be from 2028 to 2034, and it will focus on commercial use. The second mass adoption period will be for home and all other uses, and will run from 2035 onwards. Futurists like Peter Diamandis have speculated that robots will help us in our homes with laundry, vacuuming, dishes, and all other tasks, and serve multiple purposes in healthcare, elder care, manufacturing, transport, and the service industry. The future is starting now: Bank of America says that humanoid robot manufactures will ship 18,000 units this year, in 2025. By 2030, researchers expect that shipments will reach up to 10 million units globally per year. Projected humanoid robot shipments to 2060. Interestingly, the report suggests that the vast majority of humanoid robots will be household tools, with about two billion of the three billion shipped by 2060 in use in private homes, versus about a billion in the service industry, and only a few hundred million in industrial settings. If so, that could be good news for human workers: many of the household robots will be replacing unpaid work that people do for themselves, rather than paid work by employees. There are still challenges to mass adoption, the Bank of America says: In addition, there is regulatory risk: will nations regulate against humanoid robots in ways that delay or entirely stop deployments? Workers could rise up against them as well, with a historical precedent being the Luddite movement in the early 1800s in which textile workers protested against mechanized looms. Over 100 global manufacturers are working on humanoid robots, and it's a tough challenge. Humanoid robot components, with cost estimates for each part. One of the biggest: dextrous hands. Almost 20% of the cost of a robot is in the hands alone. One of the reasons why: more than half the complexity of a humanoid robot body is in the hands, Sanctuary AI CEO Geordie Rose told me last year. Other major cost components include rotary actuators in joints, linear actuators, and the chips that drive the brain of a humanoid robot.
Forbes
14-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Open Source Humanoid Robots: Hugging Face Buys Pollen Robotics
Reachy 2 is an open source humanoid robot from Pollen Robotics, which was just bought by Hugging ... More Face. The open source AI community Hugging Face has bought open source humanoid robots company Pollen Robots, Hugging Face announced this morning. That's great news for pretty much every country that is not the USA or China, the two nations that lead the world in humanoid robotics startups and innovation. 'Super happy to announce that we are acquiring Pollen Robotics to bring open-source robots to the world,' Hugging Face said on X. 'Since Remi Cadene joined us from Tesla, we've become the most widely used software platform for open robotics thanks to LeRobotHF and the Hugging Face Hub. Now, we're taking it a step further by teaming up with Pollen, who is one of the only companies in the world that actually ships open-source humanoid robots!' Pollen Robotics currently offers Reachy 2, a roughly humanoid robot that anyone can buy today for $70,000. It's a rudimentary model right now that does not walk but moves on a wheeled mobile base or can be fixed in position. It does have advanced robotic arms with seven degrees of freedom for complex manipulation of objects, but only a 3 kilogram/6.6 pound lifting capacity per arm. Reachy 2 can be teleoperated with VR equipment, is fully open source, can be programmed in Python, and comes in multiple models with varying capability, but it's best seen as a proof of concept right now. It's certainly nowhere near the level of commercial models like 4NE-1 from Neura Robotics, Apollo from Apptronik, Figure 02 from Figure, Optimus from Tesla, or Digit from Agility Robotics. Nor would Reachy 2 vault Pollen Robotics on to this list of the top 16 humanoid robot manufacturers on the planet. But this deal is still significant. Humanoid robots are advancing in leaps and bounds. Credible industry observers see them as adding serious value to the workforce in a fairly short period of time: years not decades. If that does in fact occur, nations and companies that own and/or adopt these kinds of technologies will be significantly more competitive than those who do not. Over time and with mass manufacturing, the price of labor could approach zero, which fundamentally disrupts current economic and social models. Having open source humanoid robots could be a very valuable resource to those who do not develop the technology themselves. We've seen it before in software with Linux; it's theoretically possible in a hardware world as well. 'We believe robotics could be the next interface for AI — and it should be open, affordable, and hackable,' says Hugging Face. 'Our vision: a future where everyone from the community can build and control their own robot companions instead of relying on closed, expensive black boxes.' That's especially important if the alternative is that you acquire robots from a potentially unfriendly nation that leaves a backdoor in their robots which can turn them into surveillance devices for that nation, as recently appears to have happened with Unitree Robotics's robot dog Go-1. According to MSN, Hugging Face co-founder and chief scientist Thomas Wolf would like to make Reachy 2 (or Reachy 5, or 10) fully open source so that anyone could download schematics for the robot and potentially even 3D print their own. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but it appears that Pollen's entire team of about 20 will be joining Hugging Face, including Pollen's two co-founders, Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre Rouanet.
