Zoe Kleiman

Mm-hmm.

Also in this podcast... You still need to see what it does when things aren't smooth.

You know, when it's bumbling around in the dark, when there's a tear in the carpet.

Can it avoid those trip hazards?

Can it still do all the computing, if you like, that we do in our everyday lives?

I think the audience gasped and actually I gasped as well when I saw Atlas take the stage because I've never seen a humanoid move so smoothly.

Traditionally, humanoids have been really quite clunky machines.

You've got to bear in mind, though, this was a demo.

It was programmed.

It was on a clear stage.

The argument for humanoids, you know, why do robots need to look like us?

is that if they're going to operate in an environment that's designed for a human you know your house or a factory or an office they've got to be able to get around it in the same way that we have therefore having the same kind of physique that we do but if you think about it mechanically every roboticist i've ever spoken to says you know what legs are really hard there's a lot of hardware there's a lot of joints there's a lot of things that could go wrong wheels are actually more efficient

And don't even get started on why humanoids don't need heads.

However, the tech bros in the last year have really been bigging this up.

There's been a huge push towards making humanoids happen and getting them out there into the world.

You know, this idea that they can multitask and do a number of jobs.

Again, not something that traditional robots have been able to do very well.

They're usually primed to do one thing in particular.

But this is the vision.

And as we saw on stage with Hyundai's Atlas, it does seem to be getting a little bit closer to reality.