The humanoid robot market looks set to explode in the coming years, with companies vying to be the first to get a viable android into our daily lives.

At the recent International Conference on Humanoid Robotics in Nancy, France, over 30 companies as well at research institutions showcased their latest robots.

"In the last year there has been a revolution in the actuation and in some mechatronics components. And so the robots now are more robust and more efficient, more performing," Serena Ivaldi, Director of Research at the Inria Centre at the University of Lorraine, told Reuters.

She added how engineering costs had fallen, allowing a rise in the machines being developed by global start-ups.

Moreover, the merging of AI and engineering is also significantly advancing the field of humanoid robotics. Engineers design robots to mimic human form and movement, while AI provides the 'brainpower', enabling these machines to learn from their environment, make decisions, and perform complex tasks.

"With the new AI methods that are now developed that do image processing, language processing; we are going to see robots that are more and more interactive, that they can understand our instructions and then translate them into plans, actions," said Ivaldi.

These advancements have the potential to revolutionize numerous industries, such as healthcare to disaster response.

However, Professor Agnieszka Wykowska from Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) cautioned that it might still be a way off.

"Limits, in terms of intelligence.... being naturally, in real time, able to respond to the environment, to the human and act in complex environments like home, for example, or clinical setting," Wykowska said.

"So I think this is still a big challenge and we're very far away from making robots fully autonomous to be able to interact with humans in such a way."

Nevertheless, the largest tech companies — Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Nvidia — are investing billions in adopting AI. Funding of AI and cloud companies in the U.S., Europe, and Israel is estimated to hit $79.2 billion by the end of 2024, according to venture capital firm Accel.

Multiple startups are foraying into the robotic AI space, including Vicarious, which was acquired by Alphabet-owned Intrinsic in 2022, Universal Robots, Seegrid, and Covariant.

Elon Musk said in October 2024 that there will be at least 10 billion humanoid robots priced between $20,000 and $25,000 by 2040.

(Production: Matt Stock)