But Rus and many others I spoke with at the expo suggest that this hype just doesn’t add up. Rus showed a video of herself speaking to an advanced humanoid that smoothly followed her instruction to pick up a watering can and water a nearby plant. To be strong, a humanoid needs a lot of power and a big battery. Some impressive humanoid demos don’t overcome these core constraints as much as they display other impressive features: nimble robotic hands, for instance, or the ability to converse with people via a large language model. Adcock and Figure have generally not responded to media requests and don’t make the rounds at typical robot trade shows.