Why We Keep Falling for the Myth of the Generalist Robot

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen this headline:

“A robot that can do everything.”

It’s always something like:
- Picks up objects
- Walks like a human
- Folds laundry
- Makes coffee
- Maybe does a little dance

And it usually ends the same way:
A great demo.
A wave of hype.
And then… nothing.

No real deployment.
No factory install.
No 10,000-cycle validation loop.

Just another robot that almost worked.

We Love the Fantasy

And I get it. The idea of a general-purpose robot is incredibly appealing.
It’s the closest thing we have to sci-fi becoming real.

Founders raise money on that vision.
VCs fund it.
Journalists eat it up.

But if you’ve ever built something that has to survive in the physical world - not in a pitch deck - you start to see the cracks.

The Hype Feels Close - But the Reality Isn’t

Figure AI is everywhere right now.
Tesla Bot is getting regular updates.
1X raised a monster round.

And credit where credit’s due — there’s impressive engineering happening in the humanoid space.

But here’s the filter I can’t turn off anymore:

“Can it do one thing perfectly, in a messy environment, 10,000 times without failing?”

Because that’s the bar.

Not walking.
Not object detection.
Not “we trained it in simulation.”

Can it ship, hold up, and make it through a production cycle?

That’s what matters. And we’re not there yet.

The Systems That Actually Work

They’re never the ones going viral.

They’re the ones that do one boring thing so well, it becomes invisible:

• A robotic arm that glues soles onto shoes, same pressure every time

• A fixed-frame welder that aligns to a chassis with sub-millimeter tolerance

• A pick-and-place unit that’s tuned for exactly one class of injection-molded parts

• A surgical pre-assembly bot that places catheter tubes into IV bags — thousands of times a day, without intervention

No one posts those on LinkedIn.
But they’re the robots keeping real businesses running.

The Kind of Robotics That Actually Pays the Bills

You probably haven’t heard of most of the companies building real, functioning robotic cells. That’s because they’re not chasing headlines — they’re helping businesses stay alive.

Think of:

• Wire crimping and cutting systems from Schleuniger

• Medical assembly lines from IMA Automation

• Conveyor systems from FlexLink

• Packaging and material handling cells from Stäubli or a dozen local integrators you've never heard of

The systems that win aren't trying to be smart.
They're trying to survive Tuesday - at full speed, with the operator slightly annoyed and an air compressor slightly underpowered.

Why Generalism Fails (When It Actually Has to Work)

Here’s what tends to happen when you chase the “do-it-all” approach:

You end up with:

• Grippers that can kind of do everything - and nothing well

• Perception models trained on variation that never actually matters

• Control software that’s 80% exception handling

And now your elegant system is a bloated mess that can barely make it through a demo.

When It Has to Work, Scope Gets Real

There’s a difference between what looks impressive in a demo - and what holds up in an actual operation.

It’s not about whether the robot can do twelve things.
It’s about whether it needs to - and whether doing those twelve things actually survives contact with real-world conditions.

Because when you’re deploying something physical, the edge cases aren’t theoretical anymore.
They’re in the lighting.
In the wear on the material.
In the operator restarting the system at 6:15 a.m. on a Monday.

You don’t need something flexible.
You need something predictable.

And most of the time, that means narrowing the scope - not expanding it.

Final Thought

The myth of the generalist robot isn’t going away.
But the robots that actually scale - the ones that quietly change industries - are rarely built to impress.

They’re narrow.
They’re specialized.
They’re boring in the best way.

Because they ship.
And they stay shipped.