After years of prototypes and demonstrations, humanoid robots are finally inching toward genuine mass production.
Tesla's Optimus programme is racing alongside rivals such as Figure AI, Boston Dynamics and Apptronik, each determined to move from handfuls of units to volume manufacturing.
Industry analysts anticipate that shipments will climb steeply throughout 2026 as production lines mature.
Keeping an expanding fleet of robots charged, however, is emerging as a serious engineering puzzle in its own right.
Among the more inventive solutions is the notion of embedding charging coils into the soles of a robot's feet, allowing it to top up its battery simply by standing on a compatible surface.
Yet nearly every roadmap converges on the same bottleneck: energy storage.
Ultimately, more powerful and longer-lasting batteries will determine how much a humanoid robot can lift and how many hours it can labour before it must pause to recharge.