Robot trends 2024: Humanoids, AI pique interest across robotics industries

Cobots, robot conference coverage highlights stories from robotics in 2024

Tesla

Humanoids were among the most popular content on Robotics 24/7 in 2024, including the Tesla Optimus humanoid.

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Before we turn our attention completely to 2025, let’s take one final look back at robot trends in 2024. Robotics 24/7 readers around the world were glued to our coverage of robots and automation across a variety of industries.

Some topics, specifically emerging technologies, jump out. Let’s explore some of the year’s most popular content and how robotic trends in 2024 helped shape the landscape of this technology.

Tesla, Figure AI humanoids dominate the news cycles

While humanoids are still looking for the right “footing” in industrial spaces, there’s no shortage of companies developing bipedal and quadruped robots. Readers' interest accounted for several prominent stories featuring humanoids from the last 12 months.

Elon Musk and Tesla have been working on its Optimus humanoid robot for a while now, and when Gen 2 was released in late 2023 it made waves across the robotics industry and the general news cycle.

China-based Unitree Robotics also made a splash with its G1 humanoid robot. While some skeptics question the viability and overall usage of humanoid robots, one of the main concerns with this technology is cost. Unitree released G1 with a $16K price tag, a lower price point than other market humanoids. Readers took notice.

Artificial intelligence and cobots add capabilities for human usage

Not only is AI one of the internet’s most popular search queries, it’s also becoming more relevant to the daily life of robot developers and engineers.

NVIDIA released a plethora of AI-based platforms and technologies during 2024, but the one that attracted the most eyeballs stemmed from CES 2024. Along with its partners, NVIDIA brought generative AI and robotics together during vice president of robotics and edge computing Deepu Talla's keynote at the conference. Specifically, large-language models were at the forefront of his address, and how tools like NVIDIA Jetson, Omniverse and others will play a major role in robotics and AI.

A major partnership announcement between Robust AI and DHL in early 2024 also highlighted the importance of AI in automation. The two organizations partnered to further develop collaborative robots in the warehouse space, with DHL deploying the Carter cobot for automated cart picking.

Order fulfillment and robots in the warehouse

In the distribution center (DC) and order fulfillment sectors, two deployments caught the attention of our readership.

During Manifest 2024 in Las Vegas, Ocado Group signed a deal with McKesson to provide its fulfillment technology to Canada’s largest pharmaceutical distributor. The agreement signified the first deployment of the Ocado Storage and Retrieval System outside of the grocery space.

Walmart turned to Fox Robotics to deploy 19 of its autonomous lift trucks for trailer loading and unloading across four Walmart DCs in Florida. Early returns from the deployment saw faster order fulfillment time and lower employee step counts because of the automated trucks.

RAC 2024

Lastly, Robotics 24/7 hosted its third virtual event, the Robotics Application Conference (RAC), in September. The one-day free conference featured sessions on a multitude of robotics topics, and speakers from organizations like GreyOrange, Cypher Robotics, Plus One Robotics and more.

All of the RAC 24 sessions are also available for viewing on-demand.

2024 was an exciting year for robots and automation, and 2025 will surely follow suit. Stick with Robotics 24/7, the web’s most comprehensive resource for robot and automation system news in manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, warehouses and other industrial applications for all the news in 2025 and beyond.

About the Author

Tim Culverhouse

Editorial Director

Tim is the Editorial Director of Robotics247.com. His mission is to provide valuable information and insights to robotics professionals and decision-makers, and to help them solve business challenges. He is a creative, deadline-driven, and detail-oriented storyteller. In addition, he is a sports broadcaster and public address announcer.

Robot trends 2024: Humanoids, AI pique interest across robotics industries