Humanoid robots are here, but they’re a little awkward. Do we really need them?

By MATT O’BRIEN
AP Technology Writer

Building a robot that’s both human-like and useful is a decades-old engineering dream inspired by popular science fiction. The latest artificial intelligence craze has sparked another wave of investments in the quest to build a humanoid, but most of the current prototypes are clumsy and impractical. They tend to look better in staged performances than in real life. That hasn’t stopped a handful of startups from keeping at it. One of them, Agility Robotics, has caught the attention of Amazon, which is testing out its Digit robot for warehouse work.