iRobot Cofounder Rodney Brooks Says Today's Humanoid Robots Are 'Pure Fantasy Thinking'

Rodney Brooks, the MIT roboticist who cofounded iRobot and created the Roomba, published a detailed critique of the current humanoid robot boom. Brooks argues that today's humanoid robots will never achieve true dexterity because the industry lacks sufficient touch and haptic training data — unlike vision and language, where massive datasets exist. He specifically criticizes the approach used by Tesla and Figure AI of training robots by filming humans performing tasks, calling it insufficient for replicating the 17,000 mechanoreceptors in the human hand. Brooks predicts that successful robots in 15 years will look nothing like humans — sporting wheels, multiple arms, and possibly five-fingered hands — and that most of today's billion-dollar humanoid investments will be 'conveniently forgotten.' He suggests that redirecting just 20% of current VC spending to university researchers would yield better results.