Podcast: Teradyne Robotics group president asks what's the point of humanoid robots

Key takeaways

• Humanoid robots are inefficient for factories; wheels and modular cobots offer more speed, reliability, and value.
• Traditional robots fail in high-variability tasks; new AI-driven cobots adapt better to changing factory demands.
• Labor shortages and aging populations drive the need for intelligent machines to sustain manufacturing output.
• In factories, practicality outweighs appearance—modular, task-focused robots outperform humanoid designs.

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Ujjwal Kumar, group president of Teradyne Robotics, says automated humanoids are cool, but they're not terribly practical. Why force a robot to stand on two legs when wheels could get them across a shop floor faster and with greater stability? Why create a standalone, human-like machine that needs batters when you could install an arm with a power source? In this formerly live conversation with IndustryWeek chief editor Robert Schoenberger, Kumar discusses why humans are so much better at some tasks and why a humanoid robot isn't a great solution.

Below is an excerpt from the podcast:

RS: Can you talk a little bit about some of the downsides of using the human form factor on the factory floor? 

UK: Sure. So, when you look at it, most of the work which gets done on a factory floor, a big chunk, you don't need to move out of the cell for efficiency. Like, we as human beings, we move out for bio break and coffee break. If you have a robot working there, doing welding, palletizing or cutting, some of the CNC work or assembly work, you can pretty much, stay at one place with your six arms or move on a rail and manage most of the stuff.

And there are other things which just needs to be moved efficiently from point A to point B, the, limitations of a human form factor with so many degrees of freedom, which by design will need lot more battery power. Higher degrees of freedom, more joints also means, lower reliability, lower in quality, with no real value for the customer.

So, I feel that there are limitations for that, human form factor to the kind of stuff we won't get done in a factory. 

RS: I think one of the I comments you made was that, you think about, wheels versus legs. If you have a flat factory floor, wouldn't you want wheels versus legs? Because they're more efficient. And I think of the maybe the genius of George Lucas. And, if you imagine that original C3P0 wandering around in Star Wars that is kind of what I see in a lot of these humanoid robots that I've seen a sort of slow, jerky movement. Especially at the Automate show, some of the robots could do a nice little dance, but if you say that's okay, go pick up that box, it was move over to the box. Stop slowly. Bend down. Slowly grab it. Slowly pick it up. Where a person could have done the same job in a 10th of the time, versus R2D2, which might have been the less humanoid of the two, but it was definitely more utilitarian. Could move around quickly on his wheels, easily outpace his counterpart. Yes, it's fiction, but it does seem to match what we've seen on factory floors.

UK: And I love these, the, graphics here. As you can see, the a machine which needs to work on a factory floor doesn't need the restriction of an AI on the top two hands. Exactly 20 inches apart. Legs, which are inherently unstable, like us human beings. Right? We are inherently unstable. As soon as you take the battery out of us will collapse. Like how humanoids do. Do we know, is that the most efficient way to do things in the world? In in a factory floor? I don't think so. We as humans, we did not evolve to be most efficient factory workers. We evolved for safety and other social needs.