Humanoid robots v moon poo

Last night I attended the Bristol Innovations talk, Robots That Think, chaired by Tom Heath. Having filmed quite a few robotics and AI stories over the last few years with Beeston Media it was a treat to sit back, absorb the conversation, and reflect on where the tech is heading.

Amidst all the talk of cutting-edge tech, the comment that stayed with me came from Perceptual Robotics CTO Kevin Lind. He noted that what he really wants to see in robotics is for them to become boring. He meant boring in the best possible way: working so reliably and seamlessly in the background that we cease to notice them.

This gets to the heart of the current tension between hype and reality. The media is obsessed with humanoid robots and generalised AI designed to do everything. As Sabine Hauert OBE pointed out, do you really want an expensive, complex humanoid loading your dishwasher? Rory Daniels from techUK echoed this, arguing the UK shouldn't chase the humanoid hype pushed by US and Chinese narratives, but focus on deep specialisms we excel at, like dexterity and the language of touch.

General-purpose robotic autonomy is energy-hungry and fragile. In complex, messy environments, you don't need a single machine trying to mimic human intelligence. You need ecosystems of simple, specialised robots doing one thing efficiently and communicating.

During the Q&A, I asked about the challenge of storytelling here. It is easier to build a narrative around tech like Sabine’s wildfire-tracking robot swarms where the impact is immediate and easily understandable (extinguishing wildfires before they spread). It's harder to tell a compelling story about Kevin’s autonomous drones analysing offshore wind turbines to optimise maintenance.

Yet operational benefits like these are just as profound, and in the long term bring down the cost of wind energy for everyone. It just lacks the sci-fi glamour that makes the front page. As tech communicators, we need to start shouting much louder about these quieter, systemic victories.

There are beautiful natural analogies for this approach, like the highly specialised pollinators quietly going about their daily business, yet ecosystems depend on them entirely. Thank you to the audience member who brought up slime moulds. I was excited to spot one on a tree in Devon last month – a patch of Enteridium lycoperdon, aka moon poo. It’s a slime mould that starts as a creamy, froth-like collective before forming a marshmallow mass on tree trunks. It functions as a brilliant example of tiny organisms working together to solve complex problems and navigate messy environments without a central brain.

If nature favours simple, collaborative networks over bloated, centralised systems, our industrial strategy should probably do the same. Let’s stop chasing the flashiest humanoid demos and start celebrating the beautifully boring, specialised robots that are quietly changing the world.