Robotics progress follows a maturity curve from fully structured environments (factories), through semi-structured environments (warehouses, restaurants), to unstructured environments (homes), and the pragmatic near-term focus should be semi-structured environments.
Yunzhu Li describes the progression of robotic applications from controlled factory settings through semi-structured commercial spaces to the grand challenge of unstructured home environments, advocating for a realistic, incremental approach. ✦ AI generated
Yunzhu Li · a16z Podcast · 2026-07-28 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 29:45
“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.”
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. Fully structured environments means you have knowledge and control over all the configurations within the environments like factories. Then semi-structured environments where you have certain control over the environment like Amazon warehouses or restaurants or hotels. Unstructured environments is like your home. That is the grand challenge. Robustness comes from a sufficient coverage of the scenarios that robots might encounter. 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 29:45
29:45followed 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 control 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
30:10environments 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 robots 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
30:34challenge Especially Especially my house, trust me. Three dogs, >> five-year-old. >> Yes, dogs. >> Exactly. >> If you're thinking about where does the robustness coming from, robustness coming 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
30:59move 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 humanoids 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