Dateline: April 25 2029
One of the fastest-growing technologies in human history is the extraordinary boom in humanoid robots.
In 2025 Tesla managed to produce more than 4,000 of its Optimus robots, while the top five robot makers in China barely managed 1,000 each of their flagship models. More advanced droids such as Atlas from Boston Dynamics were still undergoing development and AI training, and were far from mass production.
But once robots built by robots became a standard product of assembly lines, production scaled exponentially. Just like more humans produce more humans (by having babies), more bots can be put to work to make even more bots. Which brings down the cost and increases demand. Rinse and repeat.
“The key was reimagining the electric vehicle assembly line, and combining aspects of a smartphone production facility,” said Ricky Wang, Tesla’s head of Optimus production. “It’s a bit like making smart cars without wheels, or computers with arms and legs.”
While China’s robot factories are specialist facilities, Tesla’s Gigafactories produce robotaxis and droids side by side on
AI-optimised, automated platforms. Since Optimus is expert at building more copies of itself, as well as Cybercabs, production has soared, with little human involvement. And the robots are helping build the new factories too.
Just like computers, robots get better every year. In the first humanoid half-marathon the winning robot was almost three times slower than the human. Now robots easily beat the best long-distance athletes.
This year global humanoid production is expected to exceed
10-million and five or 10 times that number next year. It’s a veritable robot population explosion.
• First published on Mindbullets April 24 2025
Battle of the bots!
Dateline: July 17 2029
No, it’s not a cage fight between Elon and Zuck. It’s not even a boxing match between RoboElon and AutoZuck. It is a battle though. A battle for market share.
And the winner is you, the customer. Since Tesla launched its Optimus X, powered by xAI, and Meta announced that its AI was behind Figure 09, competition in the market for general purpose humanoid robots — droids — has simply exploded.
It’s all a question of critical mass and mass production, which brings down the cost to the end user, just like with electric cars. Droids such as Optimus and Figure are a fraction of the price of a new car and a lot more useful around the house, office or factory.
With lightweight electric motors and advanced battery technology, these droids can work for hours at even the most boring tasks and they’re stronger than a human of similar size. In dangerous situations, they’re expendable — to save human lives.
But it’s the AI systems originally developed for self-driving cars and chatbots that make Optimus and Figure so easy to work with. They understand natural language, and can learn new tasks. You only have to show them, or send them a link to a “how to” video. For a simple task involving recognisable objects, you only have to ask.
Now the battle is raging to dominate this space, and Tesla and Meta are slashing prices to encourage adoption. Nvidia is happily supplying the chips to keep the droids trained. Google has long ago exited the robotics field when it sold Boston Dynamics to Hyundai, but Apple is rumoured to have a secret project to develop their own iDroid.
Whether it’s a question of affordability or features, there are several models to choose from. You’re certain to find the one that’s right for you. These are the droids you’ve been looking for.
• First published on Mindbullets July 17 2024
Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
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