From left to right: NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid, and Waymo’s latest autonomous vehicle. | Source: NASA JPL, Boston Dynamics, and Waymo
With 2024 in the rearview mirror, we’re looking back at some of the biggest robotics trends of the year. While the year was full of exciting innovations and new technologies, we also saw the industry weather dips in funding and slower sales. Here are our five biggest trends for 2024:
The biggest story in 2024, by far, was all of the humanoid robots. But this year wasn’t just about flashy headlines, it was also about real, tangible advancements for the technology.
Agility Robotics’ Digit remains a leader in the space. In June, we learned that GXO officially deployed a “small fleet” of Digit humanoids at a Spanx facility in Georgia.
In November, Schaeffler AG made a minority investment into Agility and planned to buy Digit robots for use across its global plant network. These marked the first paying deployments for humanoid robots.
Figure AI is also shipping its Figure 02 system to its first paying customers. While we don’t know who its first customer is, the company said BMW Group had tested Figure 02 for handling fitted sheet-metal parts on its automotive production line for two weeks in Spartanburg, S.C. The company closed its Series B round of $675 million in February, marking one of the biggest funding rounds of the year.
We also saw a slew of new humanoid robot releases this year. Most notably, Boston Dynamics released an electric version of its Atlas robot. Atlas had long drawn attention with its impressive capabilities but remained just a research project due to its hydraulic actuation design.
The new electric Atlas is the company’s first step into the commercial humanoid race. So far, Boston Dynamics has shown the robot doing pushups and handling large automotive parts.
Other humanoid releases include EngineAI’s PM01, Pudu Robotics’ PUDU D9, 1X’s NEO Beta, LimX’s updated CL-1, Figure 02, Unitree Robotics’ G1, Sanctuary AI’s upgraded Phoenix, Mentee Robotics’ Menteebot prototype, and more.
In addition, we’ve seen many advances with Tesla’s Optimus robot throughout the year. Optimus is perhaps the most high-profile humanoid robot and this year, it grabbed attention by mixing drinks and mingling at Tesla’s We, Robot event in October.
Later, Bloomberg, The Verge, and other outlets reported the robots were being remotely operated by humans, not acting autonomously.
Advances in artificial intelligence, particularly foundation models, have been gaining traction in the robotics industry this year, with both established companies and new startups investing in the technology. NVIDIA announced Project GR00T, a research initiative that’s developing general-purpose foundation models, tools, and technologies for accelerating humanoid robot development, at GTC 2024.
NVIDIA said it designed this new model to enable robots to understand natural language and emulate movements by observing human actions.
In July, Skild AI emerged from stealth mode and closed a $300 million Series A round. The company is developing the Skild Brain, a robotics foundation model, as well as a mobile manipulation platform and a quadruped platform for security and inspection.
Later, Physical Intelligence raised $400 million to continue its development of AI for a range of robots. The company said its generalist policy will make robots easier to program and use. Its early demonstrations included robots folding laundry, assembling boxes, and dynamically putting objects into containers.
Amazon also further invested in developing foundation models. It hired Covariant’s founders and around 25% of its staff and signed a non-exclusive license to use the company’s robotic foundation models.
The company described its Covariant Brain as a “universal AI platform.” Amazon has launched the Amazon AGI SF Lab to develop new foundational capabilities for enabling useful AI in the digital and physical worlds.
While we don’t yet have robotics sales statistics for all of 2024, the first three quarters of the year were not encouraging. From January through September 2024, North American businesses ordered 23,034 robots valued at $1.4 billion, a 1.9% decline in units and a 2.2% drop in revenue in comparison with the same period in 2023, according to the Association for Advancing Automation (A3). Robot orders had already dropped 30% in 2023 from 2022.
In particular, sales declined 32% in semiconductors, electronics, and photonics, and they declined 21% in automotive components. A3 attributed these slowing sales to tight capital budgets, high interest rates, and slowed industrial output, particularly in electric vehicles.
While these numbers don’t look great, the news wasn’t all bad. For one, A3 only tracks industrial robot sales, which doesn’t include things like autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) or collaborative robots. So, these numbers could also indicate a shift away from industrial robots and towards more flexible forms of automation.
Additionally, while sales declined in sectors that traditionally adopt many robots, they’ve grown in other areas. Orders increased in food and consumer goods (+60%); life sciences, pharmaceuticals, and biomedical (+43%); and metals (+8%).
An image showing Ingenuity’s damaged rotor blade after its 72nd flight on Jan. 18, 2024. | Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This year, NASA said goodbye to one of its most exciting experiments to date. The Ingenuity helicopter, the first-ever aircraft to fly on another planet, conducted its last flight on January 18. During the flight, the NASA team confirmed that one or more of Ingenuity’s rotor blades had sustained damage during a previous emergency landing, rendering it unable to fly again.
Ingenuity’s mission lasted almost 1,000 sols — Martian days or 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds — more than 33 times longer than NASA originally planned. To keep it running, the Ingenuity team had to innovate ways to keep it running long past its original expiration date. While on Mars, the NASA team upgraded Ingenuity with the ability to choose landing sites in treacherous terrain autonomously.
The helicopter also dealt with dead sensors, cleaned itself after dust storms, operated from 48 different airfields, performed three emergency landings, and survived a Marian winter, despite being designed for the spring. In the end, the helicopter completed 72 flights, flew for over 128 minutes, traveled 11 miles (17.7 km), and reached an altitude of 79 ft. (24 m).
We’ll likely be seeing Ingenuity’s impact on many future NASA missions. Already, the organization plans to send two more helicopters to aid in the Mars sample return campaign.
When it comes to robotaxis, 2024 made one thing clear: Waymo is the clear leader in the industry. For years, Waymo, the self-driving unit of Alphabet, and Cruise, GM’s self-driving subsidiary, seemed equally matched in skills and deployments.
2023 brought road bumps for Cruise, culminating in the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) suspending its permits in the state. Cruise wasn’t able to recover from this in 2024, and in December, GM said it is no longer funding Cruise’s robotaxi deployment work. It cited long development times, high costs, and an increasingly competitive market as the reasons behind its decision.
Waymo, on the other hand, has only continued to expand its robotaxi services. It launched its first service in Los Angeles and expanded services in San Francisco and Phoenix. Waymo said it already provides over 150,000 trips per week across Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin. In 2025, it plans to launch services in Miami and Tokyo.
This year, we could see other robotaxi companies, like Zoox and Nuro, start to gain more momentum as they move from trial deployments to, hopefully, providing paid services. In 2024, Nuro expanded its capabilities using zero-occupant vehicles with the Nuro Driver system, while Zoox grew its operations in California and Nevada.
Chinese autonomous vehicle firms have also been seeing more traction recently. In October, WeRide was officially listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. The company expects total proceeds from the public offering, combined with $320 million concurrent private placement, to amount to $458.5 million.
In November, DeepRoute.ai closed a $100 million funding round. The company said it hopes to use the funds to scale collaborations with global automakers, explore future robotaxi business, and support the recruitment of more AI-native talent.
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