# Humanoid Robots and Humanoid AI: Review, Perspectives and Directions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15775 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15775/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 19 Mar 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Embodied AI Agents: Modeling the World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22355/) (2025)
- [Embodied AI in Mobile Robots: Coverage Path Planning with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02220/) (2024)
- [FLAM: Foundation Model-Based Body Stabilization for Humanoid Locomotion and Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22249/) (2025)
- [X2C: A Large-Scale Benchmark for Nuanced Humanoid Facial Expression Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11146/) (2025)
- [Learning Physiology-Informed Vocal Spectrotemporal Representations for Speech Emotion Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13259/) (2026)
- [PressMimic: Pressure-Guided Motion Capture and Control for Humanoid Robot Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.26741/) (2026)
- [VividFace: Real-Time and Realistic Facial Expression Shadowing for Humanoid Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07506/) (2026)
- [DUET: Unified Dual-Space Emotion Control for Diffusion and Flow-Matching Driven Text-to-Speech](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00066/) (2026)
- [Bridging Body and Brain: Gene-Driven Morphology--Control Co-Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31329/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In the approximately century-long journey of robotics, humanoid robots made their debut around six decades ago. While current humanoids bear human-like appearances, none have embodied true humaneness, remaining distant from achieving human-like to human-level intelligence. The rapid recent advancements in generative AI and (multimodal) large language models have further reignited and escalated interest in humanoids towards real-time, interactive, and multimodal designs and applications, such as fostering humanoid workers, advisers, educators, medical professionals, caregivers, and receptionists. These unveil boundless opportunities of transforming 1) AI robotics into a research era of humanoid AI, and 2) AI robots into new-generation humanoid AI robots (AI humanoids). Our unique and comprehensive review of about 30 reported humanoids discloses a systematic terminology and a paradigmatic landscape of human-looking to human-like and human-level humanoids. It inspires comprehensive new perspectives and directions of humanoid AI as an area: transitioning from human-looking to humane humanoids, humanizing humanoids with functional and nonfunctional specifications, and cultivating technical and actionable advances of AI humanoids. Humanoid AI and AI humanoids nurture symbiotic advancements and future opportunities of synthesizing and transforming humanity modeling and conventional, generative to human-level AI into humanoid robotics.