Humanoid robots still target an incremental market characterized by the need for highly human-like interaction and adaptation to complex environments. Their core value lies in enabling breakthroughs in unstructured scenarios and seamlessly substituting existing human workflows.
While specialized technologies serve distinct vertical applications, they can provide technical validation and commercial support for general-purpose systems. In the future, by integrating modular specialized components, humanoid platforms could expand their application scope — in turn driving upgrades in specialized domains through demand feedback.
However, specialized systems will never be fully replaced, especially in scenarios where high performance or cost sensitivity is critical. The relationship between humanoid and specialized robots can, to some extent, be analogous to the relationship between AGI and vertical AI — with each excelling in different dimensions.
That said, I personally remain somewhat skeptical about both humanoid robots and AGI. The cost of building systems capable of adapting to all human environments could be prohibitively high.
Still, imagining a future where both technologies mature — and give rise to a truly embodied AGI — is a rather fascinating prospect.