Roomba Creator Says Humanoid Robots Are Overhyped

It’s not every day you hear a robotics founder trying to cool the hype surrounding their industry, but Rodney Brooks has seen it all before. 

Speaking at a conference Tuesday hosted by Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI, Brooks, a founder of multiple robotics companies including the one behind Roomba vacuums, showed attendees a slide on “AI hype cycles I have seen” in his decades-long career. It contained no fewer than 28 examples, with humanoid robots and AI agents capping off the list.

Brooks is a professor emeritus of robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of venture-backed Robust AI, which makes rolling robotic carts for manufacturing and warehouses.

“We’re in the age of humanoid theater,” he said, pulling up a demonstration video from Figure AI, a humanoid robot developer, in which a person sets groceries on a counter and two humanoid robots put them away.