Hand dexterity remains a barrier to automation. Here's why a common benchmark could helpSS
The world is running short of hands. Across Korea, Japan, much of Europe, and increasingly China’s manufacturing base, the working-age population is shrinking, even as demand for physical goods and services holds steady. This is the backdrop to the defining technology story of the past two years: the global boom in humanoids and physical AI, as capital, talent and public imagination converge on a single proposition: that general-purpose robots can step into the gap demographics are opening.
The optimism is not unfounded. Locomotion is largely solved and navigation is maturing fast; robots can walk, balance and move through human spaces in ways that seemed out of reach a few years ago.