Flashy humanoid robots that have awed attendees at Web Summit in Lisbon this week are still far from revolutionising physical labour in factories and warehouses, Amazon’s chief roboticist told AFP.

“It’s a bit of doing technology for technology’s sake,” Tye Brady said in a Wednesday interview.

“Whenever we think about robotics, we think about, A, what’s the problem we’re trying to solve? And, B, then function. From function, we derive form. And it kind of gets it backwards if you start with form.”

Breakdancing androids from Chinese manufacturer Unitree were cited by Web Summit organiser Paddy Cosgrave as he declared that “the era of Western tech dominance is fading” on Monday.

Brady, by contrast, pointed to the more than one million robots already deployed by Amazon in its e-commerce o

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