UBTech, Agility Robotics, BluMentis Eye Farms for Humanoid Robots

Makers of humanoid robots, among them UBTech, Agility Robotics and BluMentis, are looking to deploy their systems in agriculture, a sector that already relies heavily on more conventional robots.

Classic farm robots are already widespread

Spraying, harvesting, weeding and livestock farming: agricultural robots in the traditional sense are now in strong demand among professionals. Figures from the French Ministry of Agriculture show how uneven that adoption is. In 2023, more than 14,000 automated milking machines were installed on French farms.

Another 4,000 robots were used for other tasks in livestock production, such as floor cleaning and animal feeding. Crop robots, by contrast, have been adopted far less: only 600 units were deployed in 2023.

Why it matters

The gap shows where the opportunity and the difficulty lie for newcomers. Robots built for one narrow job, such as milking, have found a clear market. Field work is more varied and less predictable, and uptake there remains limited. Humanoid manufacturers are betting that a general-purpose machine could eventually cover tasks that specialised equipment does not.

For farmers, the question will be whether such machines can prove their usefulness against proven, task-specific robots. For manufacturers, agriculture offers a new potential outlet beyond the settings where humanoids have mostly been tested so far.

The details of each company's plans, including timelines and pricing, were not available in the material reviewed here.