Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
You've probably seen one by now: a human-sized robot doing very human feats – landing a perfect backflip, racing through the streets of Beijing, or dancing in a crowd at a Knicks game. But behind these viral moments, there is serious money. Analysts predict the market for humanoid robots could be worth trillions in a matter of decades.
Everyone from trillionaire Elon Musk to Chinese President Xi Jinping is betting humanoids are the future – that one day, they will live alongside us – in our homes, and even our military. The question is: can we trust them?
Angelica Lim has spent her entire career trying to build trustworthy robots. A roboticist based at Simon Fraser University, Lim joins Machine’s Like Us to share lessons from building the world’s first mass-produced humanoid named Pepper, and why empathy in robotics is more important than ever.
Subscribe to The Globe and Mail's Morning Update to get stories directly in your inbox: theglobeandmail.com/newsletters/subscribe-morning-update
You've probably seen one by now: a human-sized robot doing very human feats – landing a perfect backflip, racing through the streets of Beijing, or dancing in a crowd at a Knicks game. But behind these viral moments, there is serious money. Analysts predict the market for humanoid robots could be worth trillions in a matter of decades.
Everyone from trillionaire Elon Musk to Chinese President Xi Jinping is betting humanoids are the future – that one day, they will live alongside us – in our homes, and even our military. The question is: can we trust them?
Angelica Lim has spent her entire career trying to build trustworthy robots. A roboticist based at Simon Fraser University, Lim joins Machine’s Like Us to share lessons from building the world’s first mass-produced humanoid named Pepper, and why empathy in robotics is more important than ever.
Subscribe to The Globe and Mail's Morning Update to get stories directly in your inbox: theglobeandmail.com/newsletters/subscribe-morning-update
