Factory Physics and Automation blog

First of all I like to say thank you for the active participation. As we just saw at CES – humanoids are “really everywhere” – but it also seems there is a long way to go to see these comrades in real productive deployments.

Here is the poll result:

Based on this data about 50% of the voters expect deployment within the next 3 years, but there is also a large fraction which points to a much later date.

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I was curious what ChatGPT & Co. think about this topic and asked a bunch of different AI tools and also did this within 3 weeks twice – and yes, the same AI app changed sometimes the expected deployment date between the 2 inquiries by up to 2 years.

A cumulative chart comparing the two results shows this:

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The AI feedback was generated by using this prompt:

“I like you to act as a technical researcher and planner. In which year will we see the first humanoid robots working in regular production in semiconductor frontend wafer fabs. Please list the top 3 facts you have used for your estimated year and back it up with data. Please tell me the year, when you have 80% confidence that the humanoid robots are deployed – not in test mode, but in normal production, executing wafer carrier transport as well as process tool loading and unloading fully autonomously. I’m only interested in your estimated year for fabs in the US or Europe, not in Asia”

This prompt does not only deliver a simple date, but a few interesting statements and remarks about the what and how of the deployments – give it a try yourself !

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When it will really happen – only the future will tell us – but one thing is sure: If your company wants to be a front runner for this effort the start of the work on how to integrate humanoids into the Wafer FAB software ecosystems needs to happen very soon.

Lastly, I ran into a nice video talking about humanoids in homes – which I think is an even more complicated deployment – worth watching.

So with all this – when do I think we will see a humanoid in a wafer FAB ? Being a technical optimist I say it will be sometime in 2028 – 2029.

Thank you for following and reading my blog.