At Tesla's robotaxi unveiling last week, several Optimus humanoid robots mingled with guests, pouring drinks and cracking jokes. It is impressive technology but the vocals as well as some of the gesticulations appear to have been remotely controlled by humans, which isn't something Tesla made public.

Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan sat down with TechCrunch hardware editor Brian Heater to talk about Tesla's Optimus bots, the market opportunity for humanoid robots and all the other companies leading the charge in this industry.

Brian observed that Tesla was giving away what are essentially advertisements about what the automaker's tech might be able to do in the future, rather than flawlessly doing what it can do today. In a comparison of the two approaches, the robotics leader Boston Dynamics has taken to showing outtakes of its demo videos to add transparency to its devices.

They also talked about investment in the humanoid robotics space, whether that hype cycle will ever die out when the investors realize the path to market is long and expensive.

A March report by CBInsights indicates that funding this year up to now has already set new high points for humanoid robots, at $775 million compared to last year's $262 million, with just three deals versus 11 last year. Data from PitchBook indicates funding into humanoid robot companies has already reached about $1 billion through October.

Brian believes that humanoid robots would be the one seen most likely in factory floors in the next few years. With BMW and other automakers in plans to use startup Figure's robots in its plants, aside from Amazon which has been a significant proponent of robotics for over a decade already, it has already tested Agility's digit robot in its warehouses.

The biggest benefit of humanoid technologies, according to Brian, is that "we built the world for ourselves.".

You walk into a factory, and it is a factory built for the human to work in. The idea is that you can essentially just slot one of these pieces of technology in there. This is what they call a brownfield factory…which means you don't have to start from scratch with the automation aspect of things.

In the future, humanoid robots could soon find themselves invading homes, particularly helping to assist older adults with household chores-the ultimate goal for Kind Humanoid. However, there are far greater safety issues at play when robots are this close to interacting with humans. And much harder to develop at the technology end is the generalized robotics notion rather than a task-specific robot on a manufacturing line.

We discuss all this as well as the potential timelines for commercial launch and the growth opportunity that investors expect to see in the humanoid robot industry. So, have a listen, and let us know what you think!