Robotic applications will progress from fully structured environments to semi-structured environments before reaching unstructured environments like homes, which remain the grand challenge.
Yunzhu Li outlines the historical progression of robotics: from fully structured environments like factories (where all configurations are known and controlled), to semi-structured environments like warehouses and restaurants (some control but many uncontrolled objects), to unstructured environments like homes — which he calls the grand challenge. Robustness comes from sufficient coverage of scenarios, which is far easier in semi-structured environments. ✦ AI generated
Yunzhu Li · a16z Podcast · 2026-07-28 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 29:31
“You told me that you think a lot of the predictions around humanoids were a little bit aggressive and we're likely to see more constrained rollouts like warehouses or whatever. Can you talk a little bit about that?”
If you look at all the progressions of robotic applications in the real environments, it has always followed the trend from going from fully structured environments into semi-structured environments and then into unstructured environments. For fully structured environments we mean you have knowledge and control over all the configurations within the environments — like factories or car manufacturing — those have been automated for decades. And then you have semi-structured environments where you have certain controls over the environments — for example Amazon warehouses or restaurants, hotels — where you have certain control to just make the task easier for your robots but there are many other objects you don't have control over. And then for the unstructured environments it's like your home and my home. That is the grand challenge. If you're thinking about where does robustness come from, robustness comes from a sufficient coverage of the scenarios that robots might encounter. So it's so much easier and more approachable at least right now to focus more on the semi-structured environments before we move on to fully unstructured environments.
verbatim transcript · starts at 29:31
29:11making sure we have the infrastructure we have all the words such as the robot can work reliably in the real environment. you know, you you you have uh told me um that you think uh a lot of the predictions around humanoids were a little bit aggressive and we're likely to see more constrained rollouts like warehouses or whatever. Can you talk a little bit about that and like how that
29:31impacts what you're going to be tackling here at uh the like world labs? >> So that's a very good question. So if you look at for example all the uh progressions of robotic applications in the real environments it has always followed the trend from going from fully structured environments into semiructured environments and then into unstructured environments. >> For fully structured environments what do we mean that you have knowledge and
29:57control over all the configurations within the environments >> like factories >> like factories or for car manufacturing mice those has been automated for decades. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have for example semiructured environments which you have certain controls over the environments for example like the Amazon warehouses or for example like restaurants hotels where you have certain control over the environment to just make the task easier for your
30:21robots but there are obviously many other like objects or for example clothes those are the object you don't have control and then for the unstructured environments it's like your home and my host >> those is I would say the the grand challenge Especially Especially my house, trust me. Three dogs, [laughter] >> five-year-old. >> Yes, dogs. >> Exactly. >> If you're thinking about where does the robustness coming from, robustness
30:45coming from a sufficient coverage of the scenarios that robots might encounter. So, it's so much easier and more approachable at least like right now to focus more on the semiructured environments before we move on to fully unstructured environments. So, we will move into that direction. It's just we want to uh take a more sustainable and more realistic approach towards it. >> I think your point here is that
31:08humanoids mimics human body and evolution has optimized human body for unstructured environment. And so our fingers, our legs are not the best apparatus to do one thing. For example, if if if our only goal as a species is to climb trees, we will not have this body necessarily, right? So, we'll have different kind of fingers. But what humans end up having are involve evolved into is this this body
31:42shape that can be very general but not necessarily best at everything. And that is for the survival of unstructured environment. But but but from a business point of view, from a pragmatic um technology point of view that this unstructured environment and a generalized body is actually the hardest problem to solve. It's not necessarily even the right way to solve the problem. It's we specialize. So we take more more