Rise of the machines

EARLIER this week, VSTECS Bhd, a purveyor of technology solutions and enterprise systems, signed an agreement with Agibot Innovation (Shanghai) Technology Co Ltd, to distribute Agibot’s humanoid robots in Malaysia.

The technology is still in its infancy, but the strides made in artificial intelligence (AI) have helped in making humanoid robots or robots in any form, become more useful and deployable by helping them learn and adapt to various situations.

These machines remain expensive and will continue to be so for some time. Most of them are built in small batches for largely research purposes or deployed in factories. Their prices range from the more affordable US$1,200 for the Bioloid Premium by South Korea’s Robotis Co Ltd to US$250,000 for the Digit by US-based Agility Robotics Inc.

By far, Chinese and Japanese robotics firms are the industry leaders where efforts to incorporate human facial mimicry to humanoid robots are concerned.

Japan’s A-Lab Co Ltd is among these companies, sometimes in collaboration with universities, which are at the forefront of this research.

Chinese robotics firms also occupy the top three spots in terms of producing humanoid robots and global shipments, with the top spot going to Agibot, while Hangzhou Yushu Technology Co Ltd, better known as Unitree Robotics, and UBtech Robotics Inc, taking the second and third spots respectively in 2025. Just over 13,000 of them were shipped globally last year, according to Omdia.

Morgan Stanley Research estimated in an April 2025 report that the market for humanoid robots may reach US$5 trillion by 2050, which includes related supply chains, repair, maintenance and support.

Get ready for this: the report added that there could be as many as one billion humanoid robots by 2050. The United Nations in 2019 estimated that there could be 9.7 billion people on Earth by then. There will be one humanoid robot for about every 10 humans.

It predicts that over 90% of these machines will likely be used for repetitive and structured tasks in the industrial and commercial sectors, with China likely to have the highest number of humanoid robots in use, with the United States a distant second. Unlike in science fiction, Morgan Stanley does not expect these machines to be as ubiquitous in homes.

In Malaysia, Nasdaq-listed Agroz Inc, a local company operating vertical farms in urban locations, late last year announced a partnership with UBtech to deploy the Walker S model of humanoid robots to work in its farms.

Visitors to Chery Automobile Co Ltd’s dealerships across the world, including in Malaysia, are greeted and helped through the process of viewing, test-driving and buying cars by AiMOGA humanoid robots that can converse with 95% accuracy in 10 languages.

Besides the VSTECS-Agibot tie-up, another recent initiative to introduce humanoid robots to the country is by I-Bhd, a property developer building the country’s first AI and robotics residential tower at its flagship i-City in Shah Alam.

I-Bhd is also partnering Agibot, which will offer a subscription-based robot-as-a-service (RaaS) model to businesses located in this residential tower that want to acquire these machines by lowering the upfront costs.

Currently, these robots are a rarity in Malaysia but businesses like VSTECS and Chery see opportunities for a number of reasons, efficiency and productivity rank high especially for manufacturing and services, but also labour availability, or the willingness of humans to work in certain jobs. RaaS is seen as one option to entice businesses and households to adopt humanoid robots.

As the labour pool shrinks due to ageing, and immigration remains a hot political issue, robots will become more indispensable. In fact, non-humanoid robots are extensively used in manufacturing and logistics while in services, boxy-type robots are starting to appear in casual-dining restaurants as servers.

While increased adoption of humanoid robots may come in time, the legal framework for these machines will also need to be worked out, especially if they have more interactions with humans. Technology breakthroughs in the AI space that expand the autonomy of these robots will also need to be addressed, for a start, guardrails over privacy and security.

One other important point is the use of robots in caregiving, a service that may see rising demand in the decades to come due to ageing populations. While automation and robotics are used in elderly care, humanoid robots are not in the picture, as yet.

The lack of empathy and the human touch is one reason.

Another is the prohibitive cost, while there is also the legal aspect to consider. If a robot malfunctions and falls on an elderly person, causing injury or death, what happens then? What are the legal implications for a robot programmed to dish out medication, overdosing a patient?

Malaysia did release a National Robotics Roadmap 2021-2030 but not much is known about it. The vicissitudes of politics during the Covid-19 pandemic and successive unstable governments with different priorities basically buried this policy framework.

Perhaps, it is time to revisit this roadmap and how to make it more relevant, given the advances in AI and how it is being embodied in robotics.