It's not a menial home robot. It's designed to replace humans in every kind of physical labor.

I can't imagine many tasks where a humanoid will be useful. I'm sure you could say that something like house construction could be done by humanoids since there are lots of steps involved but I'm still skeptical that a bunch of specialized tools won't be better at this.

I could see a multi-use robot being used in some instances but I cannot fathom why it would be shaped like a human.

And there's nothing wrong with human shape, it would be hard to design a better one.

So far the only machines that have come even remotely close to being able to fold laundry (and they aren't very good) have humanoid arms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C76osXtpLeM

There are some machines that fold laundry. They don't seem that impressive now. But I imagine if they haven't already - laundry pick-up/delivery services will roll these out.

Think of it as a stepping stone. Like automated cars, Fully automated highways are a ways off where traffic lights are no longer needed, however automated cars that work alongside the rest of the roads are feasible in the near future.

Yes there are better tools, its just a stepping stone to allow change. to force change.

There are bricklaying robots now

I don't think they are used en masse but I think if we do get to the point of some type of brick laying robots being used it will surely be something like this that doesn't have the physical constraints of two arms with limited mobility + nowhere to store bricks

I don't think machines are very close, but bipedal locomotion with human arm like articulation and grasping softish fingers is a reasonable way to get there.

If you can take a restaurant that used to have to have 10 dishwashers and fire 9 of them because a machine works fast - you can keep one guy around to do the tricky stains. Sure is a lot cheaper than buying 5 humanoid dishwashers.

In fields of high automation, like cars, production lines are almost entirely automated. Where you find areas that humans are needed isn't because our fingers are uniquely adapted to any sort of problem - it's because the problem the human solves would likely need AGI for a robot to do. I don't think anyone is anywhere close to tackling AGI.

I feel like a lot of factories are going to go in this direction. Lots of complex automation but ultimately very simple mechanisms with a strong framework to make sure nothing goes wrong.

I would say all these jobs would be automated but 0 of these would be automated by a humanoid. Driver/cashier/baggers will be computers with sensors and unlouder/shelfer will be robots more similar to that vid. Things like construction I think will be assembled ahead of time and brought to side with more automated cranes and sensors.

The number of jobs that seem like "this can be automated but can't be automated by a robot and isn't worth it to build specific robot for but IS expensive enough to use a robot that will always be more expensive than a car" seems small to me.

In the long run if this pans out, I'd expect to see farming and weeding hexapods, equipment-hauling centaurs, wheeled platforms with arms for getting around office spaces, construction bots with long-fingered hands and asymmetrical multi-jointed appendages, and so on. If the AI has a general capacity for motor-skill learning, then you can just give it whatever body is most optimal for the task at hand.

I'm reminded of this video on training an AI to walk through simulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgaEE27nsQwh