What do you do with a humanoid robot when it breaks down?

As humanoid robots enter mass production with tens of thousands of individual components each, their eventual disposal poses a complex technical and safety challenge that the industry has not yet adequately addressed. Recycling these machines is far more complicated than traditional scrapping because they contain sensitive data, stored energy in battery systems, high-performance components susceptible to fatigue, and significant quantities of rare-earth magnets that cannot be safely separated using standard crushing methods. Safe decommissioning requires skilled technicians to surgically extract parts while managing risks including data breaches, battery thermal runaway, structural failures, and magnet-related injuries like crushing and spontaneous fire hazards. The industry must move toward designing robots with modular, standardized components that can be efficiently disassembled rather than relying on permanent adhesives and integrated assemblies.