Your Robot Butler Is Finally Here

Meet Sprout, the latest humanoid robot on the scene.

Sprout is no factory worker,

but it could be a useful research tool

and could perhaps find some work

in the hospitality industry.

The humanoid business is currently booming.

Despite it not being entirely clear how practical

or useful these things will really be,

more than a dozen companies are now working

on humanoids in the US.

This includes household names like Boston Dynamics

and Tesla, as well as startups like Agility Robotics,

Figure AI, and now Fauna, which developed Sprout.

A lot of humanoids are touted as factory workers,

but Fauna believes humanoids are more likely

to take off in entertainment and the service industry.

Fauna's CEO told me that the company

is already talking to hotels

about using Sprout as a kind of butler

that brings items to guests in need.

One of Fauna's first customers is Disney.

Sprout, which costs $50,000,

is designed with human interaction in mind,

which explains these expressive eyebrows.

In a demo I was shown, Sprout was asked to check

what was in a nearby refrigerator.

After interpreting the command using an LLM,

it trudged off like a surly nine-year-old

before coming back to report what it had seen in there.

Would you like Sprout in your life?