SAN JOSE, California, March 19 (Reuters) - Nvidia ( NVDA )

CEO Jensen Huang believes humanoid robots are less than

five years away from seeing wide use in manufacturing

facilities.

Huang on Tuesday gave a keynote address in front of a packed

hockey stadium during the nearly $3 trillion company's annual

developer conference in San Jose, California.

Huang unveiled software tools that he said would help

humanoid robots navigate the world more easily.

Speaking to a group of journalists after the speech, Huang

was asked what signs would show that AI had become ubiquitous.

Among other answers, Huang said it may be "when, literally,

humanoid robots are wandering around, which is not five years

away. This is not five-years-away problem, this is a

few-years-away problem."

The manufacturing industry would likely adopt humanoid

robots first because that industry has well-defined tasks that

robots can handle in a controlled environment, he said.

"I think it ought to go to factories first. And the reason

for that is because the domain is much more guard-railed, and

the use case is much more specific," Huang said.

"The value of it is very, very easy to determine. The going

rate for renting a human robot is probably $100,000 and I think

it's pretty good economics."