With how labor-intensive (and low-margin) a dairy farm is, any level of automation that can improve matters will be welcomed, with so far Lely’s robots receiving a mostly positive response.

Elon Musk has a vision of millions of Tesla humanoid robots marching onto factory floors in a few years—and his company’s not alone in pushing this transformative tech.

Machines are everywhere. They run our factory assembly lines and make our coffee. But humanoid robots—machines with human-like capabilities—have long been the stuff of science fiction. Until now.