The Internet of Humanoids: A Survey of Technologies, Applications, and Challenges

Humanoid robots are increasingly capable of operating autonomously in human-centric environments, motivating the emergence of theInternet of Humanoids (IoH)—a paradigm that interconnects humanoid robots into collaborative, intelligent networks. Unlike traditional Internet of Things (IoT) systems that link passive or task-specific devices, IoH treats humanoids as embodied, autonomous, and safety-critical agents with tightly coupled perception, decision-making, communication, and actuation. Leveraging advances in large multimodal models, cloud–edge computing, and next-generation wireless connectivity, IoH enables real-time coordination, collective learning, and scalable fleet deployment across domains such as healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and disaster response. This paper synthesizes the IoH landscape, proposes a layered architectural reference model to unify heterogeneous subsystems, and critically analyzes challenges in security, privacy, scalability, interoperability, and ethics. We further outline open research directions toward secure, trustworthy, and interoperable humanoid networks at scale.