Rodney Brooks, one of the world’s most respected roboticists, has a blunt message for investors pouring billions into humanoid robot startups: you’re throwing money away.

Brooks, co-founder of iRobot and longtime MIT professor, is deeply skeptical of companies like Tesla and Figure that believe showing robots videos of humans at work will magically teach them dexterity. In a new essay, he dismisses this approach as “pure fantasy thinking.”

Why Humanlike Robots Struggle

The core problem lies in the human hand. It’s an astonishingly complex tool, with about 17,000 touch receptors — far beyond anything today’s machines can replicate. Unlike speech recognition or computer vision, which built on decades of structured data collection, robotics lacks a tradition of capturing the touch data needed to make real progress.

Safety is another concern. Full-sized humanoid robots require enormous amounts of energy just to stay upright, making falls dangerous. Scaling them up only compounds the risks: a robot twice the size packs eight times the destructive energy.

Brooks’ Prediction

Brooks doesn’t think humanoid robots are doomed altogether — just the “human-shaped” ones. He predicts that within 15 years, the most successful robots will roll on wheels, sport multiple arms, and use specialized sensors, leaving behind the dream of mimicking human form. For now, he sees today’s billion-dollar bets as flashy training exercises with little chance of scaling to mass production.

Skepticism Isn’t New

This isn’t Brooks’ first reality check. Last year, he told TechCrunch that generative AI often creates more work rather than less. A study by nonprofit METR backed him up: when 16 seasoned developers were tasked with nearly 250 real software issues, AI tools made them 19% slower — even though they felt 20% faster.

Brooks has also pushed back against fears that AI is an existential threat, a position that has put him at odds with tech leaders like Elon Musk. As early as 2017, he argued that Big Tech’s data advantage didn’t guarantee dominance in robotics. Yet today, many leading startups are firmly under the influence of tech giants.

Big Tech’s Robotic Bets

Apptronik: Raised nearly $450 million, with Google as an investor. It partnered with Google DeepMind last year to merge advanced AI with robotic hardware.
Figure: Backed by Microsoft and the OpenAI Startup Fund, it briefly teamed with OpenAI before splitting in March. Just weeks ago, it announced over $1 billion in fresh capital, pushing its valuation to a staggering $39 billion.

Despite the flood of money, Brooks remains unconvinced. For him, the humanoid robot boom looks less like a revolution and more like a bubble destined to burst.

Source