All eyes are on AI and the chatbots powered by them, but we aren’t talking enough about the quiet rise of multitasking robots in 2025. Gimmick-heavy robots like the Optimus Tesla Bot have made us skeptical about the potential of robotics to get us closer to the humanoid assistants we’ve all seen in the movies, but robotics extends beyond the mannequin-like form we’re expecting to see.
In many ways, the capabilities of AI-powered robots have already exceeded our expectations in 2025, even if they tend to look more innocuous than the full-fledged human bots we’d expected to see. Generative AI in robotics has been a key area of focus in AI development, but it hasn’t received nearly enough attention. Home automation trends suggest that users are growing more and more comfortable with the idea of smart homes, and AI home assistant robots are growing in number.
Image: Pexels
Multitasking Robots in 2025: What Do We Know About Generative AI in Robotics?
Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot sci-fi short story collection painted a very bleak picture of the relationship between man and machine, and the 2004 movie reiterated the same sentiment quite wonderfully. Despite all the stories we have about AI and robots growing too powerful and too intuitive for the good of humanity, we are headed toward a future where a large number of tasks will be automated.
As unnerving as that is, generative AI in robotics also has the potential to speed up intricate tasks or do the jobs none of us want to do, whether it’s working under dangerous conditions or doing our laundry. Some robotics are hyper-specific, designed for a very niche task of putting things on and off conveyor belts, held in place, and automated to a large degree.
Industrial automation with robots is where many of us have already seen this automation in action. Their usefulness cannot be denied, but multitasking robots, or polyfunctional robots, are where we expect to focus more in 2025.
Image: The Agility Robotics’ Digit robots
Industrial Automation Robots Pave the Way for Robotics
In 2024, Walmart revealed that it was using FoxBot autonomous forklifts to try and automate some of the tasks within the warehouse. Similarly, on March 3, 2025, Amazon revealed that it has employed over 750,000 robots across its operations network. The company’s new fulfillment center in Shreveport, Louisiana, is said to utilize eight different robotics systems to aid with packing fulfillment and delivery.
These numbers are staggering but are not unusual. More and more, we’re seeing robots gain complexity and the ability to distinguish between tasks, allowing them to do more than just perform one repetitive task.
In 2024, Agility Robotics, the creators of Digit robots, announced RoboFab, the world’s first full-scale humanoid robot factory. The facility boasted of the capacity to create 10,000 units a year and then further expand its production. The goal set was to eventually employ these robots to produce their brethren.
Tesla is regularly all over the place with its investments, but what the company does have is money, and it intends to invest a lot of it in building 5,000 Optimus robots this year, according to Elon Musk. He acknowledged that the goal was ambitious and unlikely to be met, but he appeared certain that those produced would be productive by the end of the year. The purpose of these robots remains unclear, but Tesla claims they have been helping around its factories.
The industrial application of multitasking robots will continue to grow in 2025.
Image: SwitchBot’s Multitasking Household Robot K20+ Pro
Home Automation Trends: What Does the Future of Home Robotics Look Like?
Roomba robot vacuum cleaners have been part of households for years, busying themselves with the singular purpose of keeping homes clean. In 2025, the capabilities of these smart home gadgets are evolving. At CES 2025, SwitchBot revealed its Multitasking Household Robot K20+ Pro, a gadget that takes care of many of the chores around the house, eliminating the need for you to manually do them yourself.
Not only does the robot offer to clean the house, but it can also act as a security camera, an air purifier, and a spot cooler for those hot summer days when you can’t move yourself to a cooler area. It can also carry small items around for you. The modular design concept eventually allows us to build attachments to enhance its capabilities.
The device isn’t one we’d call “smart” as it doesn’t employ any thinking capabilities to determine what needs to be done, however, we are growing closer to the multitasking robots concept in 2025, and these will inevitably integrate AI once companies figure out how.
Still unconvinced? CES 2025 also unveiled OpenDroids’ R2D3 home assistant robot, which can perform household chores like folding laundry and washing dishes. It’s an expensive assistant to be sure, but another example of the home automation trends we’re seeing today.
AI-powered Robots Gain Momentum in 2025
Consider Jizai’s Mi-Mo gadget, a customizable AI robot with multimodal capabilities and an adorable design boot. Samsung’s Ballie is a smart home gadget that can perform multiple tasks around the house and learn from users’ behavior patterns to intuitively make changes to improve its services. The robot ball with its little projector is expected to be released sometime in 2025.
The Tesla Optimus Robot fleet is also in the works for 2025, but we’re more focused on what Nvidia is doing in this playing field. The company has established itself as the GPU chipmaker to beat and its contributions to the AI industry cannot be ignored. Surprisingly that isn’t all Nvidia has been working on. The company unveiled its open-source foundation model Isaac GR00T N1 or Groot N1, which is designed to power the “age of generalist robotics.”
Theoretically, that sounds great, but seeing robots in action creates a more visceral reaction in us all. In 2025, to show us the power of AI-powered robots, Nvidia also unveiled “Blue,” a tiny device that looks like our favorite robot, Wall-E. The sweet little creature was developed in partnership with DeepMind and Disney Research for the Newton project. Its purpose remains unclear, but its design is something we can get behind.
At the Nvidia GTC event, the robot was seen interacting with CEO Jensen Huang, showcasing its ability to move around and respond to its environment. Will this be a device we see replicated and sold in the larger markets? It’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, but it does show us how the world of robotics is evolving. Generative AI in robotics is going to lead to some big changes but we’re still in the early days of seeing how it evolves.
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