A “one humanoid every 30 minutes” factory clip split r/singularity

The Leju Robotics post drew 643 points and 157 comments because it pressed on a core robotics question: when humanoid robots scale, does manufacturing become the bottleneck or the accelerator? The post linked a video clip and claimed an automated factory could produce one humanoid every 30 minutes. The thread focused less on formal verification of that claim and more on what the visible process seemed to show.

The top comment captured the skeptical read: automated, until the hands of the assemblers appear. That is not a throwaway objection. For humanoid production, automation has to cover more than moving shells down a line. Parts supply, fixtures, cable routing, calibration, QA, repair, and final testing all matter. A clip can show momentum, but it cannot by itself prove sustained throughput or low-touch production.

The optimistic side of the thread was equally revealing. Several commenters jumped to the feedback loop: robots building robots, maintained by robots, with AI systems helping design and test the next iteration. That is classic r/singularity energy, but it also points to the real strategic issue. If humanoid makers can automate more of their own production process, scaling becomes a different problem than hiring and training a large human assembly workforce.

The useful read is to separate signal from claim. The signal is that humanoid companies are making manufacturing a central part of the story, not just showing demos of walking or manipulation. The unresolved questions are harder: is the 30-minute cadence a prototype line, a sustained production metric, or a promotional estimate; how much human intervention remains; and how quickly defects are caught. The community reaction was half hype and half audit, which is exactly the mix this category needs.