Source: The Verge
As robotics companies move past the uncanny valley fixation, they're optimizing for task efficiency over human form—wheeled bases, articulated appendages, and modular designs that actually work in warehouses and factories rather than impress at tech conferences. The humanoid form factor was always a poor constraint inherited from human-centric design thinking. Companies like Boston Dynamics and Tesla are building machines for the jobs they need to do. This shift accelerates deployment timelines and ROI in logistics and manufacturing, where form-factor flexibility beats the mythical general-purpose humanoid.