Meta bought humanoid startup Assured Robot Intelligence to beef up its AI models for robots, the company said.

Humanoid robots are getting a new gig as baggage handlers and cargo loaders at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport—part of a Japan Airlines experiment to address a human labor shortage as airport visitor numbers have surged in recent years.

On this episode of Bloomberg Primer, we explore the gap between futuristic hype and reality—and how quickly it will shrink.

A vertically integrated humanoid robot factory has opened here. A start-up company called 1X Technologies plans to mass-produce its NEO machine at the state-of-the-art 50,000-square-foot facility. The general-purpose home robot is designed to work alongside humans in everyday environments and perform a variety of domestic chores.

Robots can now run a half-marathon faster than humans and are rapidly homing in on the 100-metre sprint record. But why are companies so keen to create speedy robots that have no obvious application in homes or factories?