Foreign workers harvesting oil palm fruits at a plantation in Dengkil. AZHAR MAHFOF/The Star
DAWN in Malaysia, year 2035.
Amid misty palms, a local worker and his humanoid Madani-007 harvest smoothly – one clean cut, no strain.
Robot dogs gather bunches and loose fruits, haulers roll uphill, data streams to the supervisor’s tablet.
Sweat meets circuitry; soil meets steel. Not fiction – just tomorrow, waiting for Malaysia to move.
But somewhere in Hangzhou, a humanoid named Unitree G1 just slipped into what its engineers cheekily call anti-gravity mode – and it’s kicking back, literally.
The sight of a machine shrugging off brutal strikes like a cybernetic kung-fu master had its creators cheering and gasping in equal measure.
Nearby, AheadForm is crafting humanoid heads so eerily lifelike they could star in a sci-fi remake of IP Man.
Fourier Intelligence’s N1 doesn’t merely walk – it flips, spins and kung-fu’s its way into the robotics hall of fame.
Clone Robotics from Poland is building synthetic muscles that twitch and flex like the real thing, while Skild Artificial Intelligence (AI) from USA tests robot dogs by tossing chainsaws in their path – not as weapons, but as tests of adaptive intelligence.
And while we scroll past these viral marvels on our phones, China has quietly deployed more than two million robots across its factories, farms and logistics hubs – adding another 300,000 in just the past year, more than the rest of the world combined.
They assemble trucks in minutes, move in synchronised swarms and scale production with breathtaking precision.
This isn’t science fiction anymore; it’s a robotic renaissance unfolding before our eyes.
Meet the new field hands
At the vanguard stands Unitree Robotics, whose four-legged “robot dogs” and agile humanoids have become global sensations.
Its R1 humanoid, launched at just US$5,900, is a small but formidable creature powered by multi-modal AI that recognises faces, voices and commands.
Only days ago, Unitree unveiled its next act: the H2 humanoid athlete that walks, runs and even dances with unnerving grace.
No longer confined to laboratories, it’s entering production floors and prayerfully soon, fields.
It’s no wonder Time Magazine crowned the R1 one of the Best Inventions of 2025, its founder Wang Xingxing among the Top 100 Most Influential People in AI, and the company itself among the TIME 100 Most Influential Companies.
And no – this isn’t an infomercial, just my confession of too many late-night YouTube marathons.
Unitree and its peers simply embody what happens when scale meets speed and stubborn determination.
Now imagine that ingenuity harnessed in our plantations: robot dogs navigating peat soils in Sarawak, autonomous haulers ferrying fruit bunches across Sabah’s undulating estates, humanoids assisting harvesters under a tropical sun.
Far-fetched? Not anymore.
The technology is here; the question is whether we’ll grasp it – before it grasps someone else’s market.
Why China? Because China is robotics
While many nations – Malaysia included – are still producing feasibility studies that never crawl beyond technical readiness level for deployment.
China is already deploying, scaling and exporting. It doesn’t merely do robotics; China is robotics – at scale, at speed and increasingly, at a price point that no longer intimidates.
Millions of industrial and service robots hum across its economy.
It is a nation building the future while others are still benchmarking it, an open-air laboratory where bold ideas are built, tested, improved and shipped worldwide.
Meanwhile in Malaysia
To be fair, Malaysia hasn’t stood still.
The Mechanisation and Automation Research Consortium of Oil Palm, Malaysian Palm Oil Board scientists and several private and plantation innovators have championed drones, cutters and even exoskeletons.
But progress has been cautious – steady enough to tick the box, not enough to tip the scale.
Too many ideas remain trapped in conference halls and powerpoints.
While we form committees, humanoids learn to walk. While we “explore options,” robot dogs sprint uphill.
Harvesting still consumes over half our plantation labour. Palms grow taller, terrain tougher and labour thinner.
Prices may rise and offer relief, but short-term comfort breeds long-term complacency – like patching a leaking boat with confetti and praying for calm seas.
Algorithm for oil palm
Robots today can lift tonnes in warehouses.
If robotic dogs can scramble through debris in Sichuan or Fukushima, they can surely handle the mud of Malaysian soils.
But the real challenge isn’t lifting – it’s pulling fresh fruit bunches down in graceful pendulum strokes, pulling productivity upward, and pulling an entire industry out of inertia.
The key isn’t just mechanical – it’s algorithmic.
What we need now are not stronger arms, but smarter minds – algorithms that can see, sense and decide amid the clutter of fronds and thorns.
It’s time we expedite partnerships with technologists who have already cracked the codes of balance, vision and motion and work with them to develop the algorithms of oil palm: harvesting, and handling.
The obstacle also isn’t the terrain; it’s the mindset. Too often, we treat tropical humidity as an excuse instead of an engineering opportunity.
Mechanisation is not about replacing workers; it’s about redefining work.
It’s about making it safer, smarter and more dignified.
The next generation won’t queue for back-breaking jobs, but they might if those roles involve managing machines, analysing data and merging human judgment with robotic precision.
From feasibility papers to field pilots
What Malaysia needs isn’t another glossy report; it’s a leap of faith through partnership. China already has the 3 P’s – prototypes, patents and perseverance.
We have land, agronomy and the legacy of plantation management.
There’s no need to start from ground zero when others have already built the launch pad.
This isn’t a call to abandon local ingenuity, it’s a call to accelerate it through international collaboration.
We should be engaging global pioneers, not as vendors but as partners. Real collaboration means pilots, not plaques; joint ventures, not polite memoranda of understanding (MoUs). The goal isn’t novelty; it’s necessity.
Mechanise or perish - Case for courage and copying smartly
I’ve sat through more mechanisation meetings than I can count - each promising breakthrough.
Meanwhile, trees outgrow our tools, workers age and many “new” innovations look suspiciously like their 1980s ancestors.
The pace of progress is too slow for the scale of our challenge.
Short-term price cycles and guest labour can no longer mask structural weakness. Mechanisation is no longer research - it’s survival.
Malaysia once learned from the British and went on to outgrow the colonial classroom. There is no shame in learning now from China, whose relentless drive has made it the world’s robotics powerhouse. The point isn’t to imitate blindly, but to adapt intelligently.
There is wisdom in borrowing brilliance. We can copy smartly, localise proudly. That’s not imitation; that’s evolution - the same instinct that turned planters into pioneers a century ago.
From exhibition halls to estates
Every year, Malaysia showcases impressive technology - drones, sensors, cutters - yet few innovations make the leap from exhibition hall to estate in scale or long-term.
Technology is admired, not adopted.
Let’s reverse that. Fund real-world pilots where humanoids and robot dogs work beside human oil palm harvesters. Invite our partners to our fields - not for selfies, but for solutions.
Technology is not the enemy of labour; it’s the enabler of dignity. Mechanisation transforms fieldwork from menial to meaningful, allowing those who once bent their backs under the sun to instead train, supervise and lead.
Rethinking mechanisation as national policy
With 5.6 million hectares under oil palm and an industry worth over RM100bil, mechanisation cannot remain a side agenda. It must be a national strategy.
We need a cross-ministerial task force bringing together growers, engineers, financiers and policymakers - one that thinks not in election cycles but in 10-to 50-year horizons.
Purpose-driven for oil palm mechanisation should sit within the Digital Economy Blueprint, alongside robotics, AI and data analytics.
Because while we draft and debate, others deploy.
Every year of delay costs us in yield, manpower and relevance. Manual dependence raises costs, slows output and deters youth. The tragedy isn’t that we can’t keep up - it’s that we once led. Malaysia was once the benchmark in breeding, agronomy and plantation research and development. Mechanisation must now be our next great leap, ensuring we remain not just a producer but a pacesetter.
From wayang to working robots
So to my fellow oil palm stakeholders: stand taller, think bolder and link up with the best. Engage with the trailblazers shaping agricultural robotics - don’t waste another decade reinventing the wheel when others are leaping forward.
The goal is clear: durable, terrain-tested, cost-effective robots with real after-sales support - not million-ringgit prototypes with a million excuses.
If some plantation groups are already in talks with innovators, may those seeds bear fruit.
But secrecy must give way to national shared progress.
Enough with half-baked MoUs - perhaps time for real government to government diplomacy and real mechanisation.
Because if we don’t start soon, others will already be harvesting while we’re still talking about prototypes.
From roots to robots
The oil palm industry has never lacked ingenuity - only urgency. For decades, we’ve been growing sideways, not upward. It’s time to rise, to rewire, to robotise.
The future isn’t waiting. It’s already walking on four legs, scanning terrain with Light Detection and Ranging, and humanoids learning faster than we can legislate.
The robots are coming. The only question is whether they will work for us or instead of us. Mechanisation isn’t about job loss; it’s about job uplift. The next generation of planters should be coders, controllers and conservationists.
This isn’t alarmism - it’s realism, spoken with care, not criticism. It’s tough love for an industry I hold dear, one that has fed families, built communities and sustained a nation.
And yes, some may bristle but we must rise above pride and protocol. The plantation sector is too vital, too interwoven with our livelihoods, to be held hostage by inertia or ego.
The next chapter of Malaysia’s oil palm story won’t be written by parangs and memos but by robots that can harvest, haul and hum “Malaysia Boleh.”
The technology stands ready. Our choice is simple: tap it in partnership - or watch others reap the future we once led.
Joseph Tek Choon Yee has over 30 years experience in the plantation industry, with a strong background in oil palm research and development, C-suite leadership and industry advocacy. The views expressed here are the writer’s own
