Robot Industry Split Over That Humanoid Look (axios.com) 62
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Advanced robots don't necessarily need to look like C3PO from "Star Wars" or George Jetson's maid Rosie, despite all the hype over humanoids from Wall Street and Big Tech. In fact, some of the biggest skeptics about human-shaped robots come from within the robotics industry itself. [...] The most productive -- and profitable -- bots are the ones that can do single tasks cheaply and efficiently. "If you look at where robots are really bringing value in a manufacturing environment, it is combining industrial or collaborative robots with mobility," ABB managing director Ali Raja tells Axios. "I don't see that there are any real practical applications where humanoids are bringing in a lot of value."
"The reason we have two legs is because whether Darwin or God or whoever made us, we have to figure out how to traverse an infinite number of things," like climbing a mountain or riding a bike, explains Michael Cicco, CEO of Fanuc America Corp. "When you get into the factory, even if it's a million things, it's still a finite number of things that you need to do." Human-shaped robots are over-engineered solutions to most factory chores that could be better solved by putting a robot arm on a wheeled base, he said.
"The thing about humanoids is not that it's a human factor. It's that it's more dynamically stable," counters Melonee Wise, chief product officer at Agility Robotics, which is developing a humanoid robot called Digit. When humans grab something heavy, they can shift their weight for better balance. The same is true for a humanoid, she said. Using a robotic arm on a mobile base to pick up something heavy, "it's like I'm a little teapot and you become very unstable," she said, bending at the waist.
"The reason we have two legs is because whether Darwin or God or whoever made us, we have to figure out how to traverse an infinite number of things," like climbing a mountain or riding a bike, explains Michael Cicco, CEO of Fanuc America Corp. "When you get into the factory, even if it's a million things, it's still a finite number of things that you need to do." Human-shaped robots are over-engineered solutions to most factory chores that could be better solved by putting a robot arm on a wheeled base, he said.
"The thing about humanoids is not that it's a human factor. It's that it's more dynamically stable," counters Melonee Wise, chief product officer at Agility Robotics, which is developing a humanoid robot called Digit. When humans grab something heavy, they can shift their weight for better balance. The same is true for a humanoid, she said. Using a robotic arm on a mobile base to pick up something heavy, "it's like I'm a little teapot and you become very unstable," she said, bending at the waist.
bicycles made for us (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Goats, rams, and deer can haul ass on irregular landscapes when running from predators. But they can't hold things while running.
Maybe the ideal general purpose bot would look like a centaur, assuming power efficiency isn't the driving factor.
Re: (Score:3)
You're still stuck in the chauvinistic mindset of your experience. It wouldn't look like a centaur. It would look like a crab with slug-like eyestalks and antennae for sensing and one or two manipulators sprouting from center of mass like either a multi-articulated arm, or an elephant trunk. Maybe both.
Re: (Score:1)
To deal with rough terrain the body has to sit high, or at least potentially high. Perhaps something like H.G. Well's Martian Tripods.
Re: (Score:2)
you know why (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
An elephant trunk is a type of tentacle. But you need rigid lever arms for lifting weight efficiently. So, I'd suggest one of each.
Re:bicycles made for us (Score:4, Interesting)
The key problem with robotics is that they have to exist in a "human space" so it's best if they look and operate like a human, or at least a human in a wheelchair. (Go look at Short Circuit 1 and 2, They made an ACTUAL robot, but it was puppeted with a telemetry suit to make the film. Take note at how many things had to be "adapted" by the robot.)
A humanoid robot, doesn't need say, 5 fingers, it can probably get away with 3 as long as the "fingers" are long enough to go around a sphere. A "robot arm" still has to navigate a space designed for humans.
Take a look at Europe and then take a look at Asia. All the cities that have existed for 800 years or more, were designed at human scale, or human+horse+cart scale. They were never designed for 3m wide trains or automobiles in both directions. Robots not intended to go indoors, thus only need to be "horse and cart" scale. So if they fit in a cargovan, they are good to go. But a Robot that has to go indoors needs to navigate stairs, which is easier with "legs" than tank treads or wheels. How do wheelchair'd individuals navigate homes with stairs? They get out and climb with their arms. When people start losing the ability to walk, but don't want to give up their home, they instead start living on the main floor of their home, and only the other people they live with (eg a spouse) go upstairs or downstairs. This is why "condo" and "apartment" buildings are actually far more human accessibility friendly than a house. They are a single floor and have elevators.
Thus a robot (say a food courier) that needs to pick up food from 500m away, and deliver to someone on the 20th floor has a few options to deliver
a) Pick up the food, and fly directly to the customer if they have a patio big enough to land on. So a robot the size of a grocery bag quadcopter can do this.
b) Go on "foot" with human shaped legs, uses the sidewalk, use the human elevator and push the entercom buttons like a human. Tank treads like Johnny 5 in Short Circuit may also work, but MOST floors in buildings would be damaged since they're designed for rubber soled shoes.
c) Be a "food delivery cooler" robot that is on a rubber wheel bogie (see rail terminology.) This vehicle uses the vehicle road, follows the vehicle traffic lights, has a an extending "tail" that sticks up at trucker visibility height when it enters and leaves the road, this shows the signals it's taking. It drives into the parkade of who orders the food and uses the elevator from the parking level. Basically the "R.A.L.F" from Flight of the Navigator.
Re: bicycles made for us (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Robots will be humanoid with 5 fingers and more flexibility than actual humans, simply because it will be cheaper to make them that way. Rather than trying to save money by simplifying the hands, off-the-shelf five fingered hands will become available, along with software to operate. The economy of scale will dominate.
Look at the humanoid robots coming out of China. They tend to be a bit smaller than most adults, but otherwise are humanoid. There is already a whole ecosystem supplying component parts and so
Re: (Score:2)
China is why you can buy an amazingly good harmonic drive for peanuts from aliexpress. Any size, any ratio, any power, it's amazing.
Good gripping hands, anywhere are a very very long way away. Mass production can make amazingly good stuff amazingly cheap, but it doesn't generally push the state of the art in anything except mass production which is why we don't consider "lab tech" to be ready yet.
Humans hands are ludicrously strong and dextrous at the same time. I can thread a needle and grab a bag of buil
Re: (Score:2)
"but for traction and go-anywhere capability, something that can use more limbs sounds optimal to me"
Mountain dwelling critters and humans all have four limbs, arms give up some fo the speed and power of legs but trade it for versatility and precision. To compare fairly to a mountain goat you'd need a human free climber.
Goats find paths up high but there is no way they could do this https://www.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]
But really anybody who wants their sex bot to look like a goat is already happy with a goat.
If bots look like R2D2 instead of (Score:3)
...C-3PO, then people inadvertently stuff trash in them.
Re: (Score:2)
Like that old Mac Pro? /s
I don't buy the dynamically stable argument (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't buy the "humanoids are more dynamically stable," argument by Melonee Wise. Humanoids aren't the only thing that can shift their balance... You could also have an arm that swings out a stick with a weight on as a counterbalance. Problem solved, and with much less complexity than a full humanoid robot.
THere might be other good reasons for going with a humanoid design, but there are much easier things to balance.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes.. across one plane of motion. Sure you can keep upping that game... but at some point you might as well have made a gripper with a rotating wrist and your arm with a stick with a gripper on a rotating wrist is what we call a 'hand' or 'foot' on a human.
But the problem they have here is they've missed the purpose of robots entirely. All robot technology for other purposes is just a way to fund the advancement of sex bots and outside a few very weird asian guys and a few gamer geeks who wish they were wei
Re: I don't buy the dynamically stable argument (Score:2)
It sounds like a puff piece to me too. (Score:2)
"The reason we have two legs is because whether Darwin or God or whoever made us, we have to figure out how to traverse an infinite number of things,"
I must have missed that lesson/sermon. I thought it was because humans evolved from creatures that walked on four feet, started using the front pair to grasp things, added opposable thumbs and then - Boom! - big-brained toolmakers.
Re: (Score:2)
I must have missed that lesson/sermon.
I think the GP accidentally picked up the Ostriches religious texts.
The GOAT of balance (Score:3)
Can a human do this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It's not really about balance, it's about the ability to be unbalanced much of the time and stay upright.
Old robots had to maintain balance at all times, which is why they walked kind of squat and slowly, with one foot on the ground at all times. See the Tesla Optimus robot for a recent example, or others going back to the late 90s.
Modern robots don't need that, they can move like animals and humans do where they deliberately make themselves off-balance, fall in the direction they want to go, and catch them
Re: (Score:2)
The only reason to have a humanoid robot is because the world is made for humans, because humans designed it for humans.
Opening a door, for example, requires a hand because that's how we designed doors to open. Now, some doors have knobs and others have levers (because knobs have poor accessibility) but they were primarily designed for hands first.
Likewise, stairs were primarily designed to get humans up and down.
You can design robot attachments to interface with designs like this but if it isn't a hand, th
SF explored this a very long time ago (Score:2)
The story "Q. U. R." had an inventor simplify robots which were going insane from having humanoid features they had no use for. 1943.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: SF explored this a very long time ago (Score:2)
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/... [isfdb.org] " Quinby's Usuform Robots" (1943), apparently
AI is making real progress, but... (Score:2)
...the hypemongers exaggerate every accomplishment to get more buzz and funding.
The robot hypemongers want a piece of the action, so they make humanoid robots dance.
Meanwhile, real robot engineers design robots that are useful.
Robots need to be designed to efficiently, reliably and economically do the job, not dance and look coo.
A humanoid airplane autopilot robot that sat in the captain's seat and operated the controls with hands would be pretty silly, eh?
Re: (Score:1)
Absolutely. But that's not the use case. The point of humanoid robots is to not have to undergo retooling. Sure we could re-build all the factories, warehoused and even homes. But that would cost way, way more than building robots that can work in the existing ones.
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, I don't see why this is such a hard concept. Probably rooted in the capitalist west belief that labor gives humans value, thus a robot able to do any work a human can do is threatening the value of humans.
But imagine if every human just had a labor robot. 1 robot per person, that they could send to perform labor on their behalf while the human just did whatever they wanted.
Re: AI is making real progress, but... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A humanoid airplane autopilot robot that sat in the captain's seat and operated the controls with hands would be pretty silly, eh?
It'll just leak air and they always put the refill values in the most suspicious places.
Wheels (Score:2)
Re: Wheels (Score:2)
Depends on the application (Score:2)
Obviously, industrial robots must suit the task. They are likely single-purpose, and not humanoid.
General purpose robots meant to move in human spaces? Hmanous will work best, because our spaces are designed for that.
They're doing it because it's cool (Score:2)
Also because it's a challenge -- if you can successfully build a mechanical human being, you can probably build most any other kind of robot as well afterwards, with the insights you learned during the development process.
Raving loon (Score:1)
whether Darwin or God or whoever made us
Dear clueless Chuckledink.
NOBODY claims that "Darwin made us". What sort of raving loon wonders around with that sort of nonsense in their head?!
Mr Cicco sounds like a grad-A ignoramous. Like many self-infatuated CEOs...
Re: (Score:1)
I just logged in (after years) to give my +1 to your post. That particular line rubbed me the wrong way too.
And me. What a crock.
Objective Opinion (Score:2)
Aliens consider humans as ugly bags of mostly water. I also have video proof that when one of our top ranking military officials was called that, an AI agreed that's it's an "accurate description of humans."
throwing gasoline on a fire (Score:2)
Not sure if we should hand this discussion to a grad student or AI.
Perhaps AIs that are expected.... (Score:2)
to live with human beings might be more predisposed to understand our lives if they "grew up" in a humanoid form.
With that thought in mind, text only ASI terrifies me.
{^_^}
Humans also split (Score:2)
But human tastes also vary.
Re: (Score:2)
Flat butts are the thing!
With good reason! (Score:2)
This is a dependent on the context of the robot.
* For business (e.g. manufacturing), there is no utility of having a specific look.
* For personal use, there is a psychological benefit of appearing humanoid: we will treat and accept it more like a person rather than a scary and imposing machine. However, since if it is interactive then it will have the expectation of operating similarly to a human, performing basic tasks on par with a human.
Given the current status of mechatronics, it is premature to focus o
Re: (Score:2)
Right answer, wrong analysis.
Yeah, it definitely depends on the use case, but lots of business use cases would also benefit from a "humanoid" appearance, even if not a humanoid form factor. A face an expressive "shoulders" would be useful on a robotic fork-lift, as would a voice. But a fork lift doesn't need (or want) a human shaped body. (I wonder how a fork lift should shrug, but it should be able to.)
Now specialized robots wouldn't need that capability. And there is definitely a use-case for human sh
Sex toys and slave fantasies .. (Score:1)
.. need humanoid robots. The Weird Science [wikipedia.org] crowd want Kelly Le Brok . The rest an obedient slave who doesn't answer back.
I'd make them for space exploration, an IG-88 with a flower and a gun.
Re: (Score:2)
It's all about training (Score:1)
The first thing Tesla built for Optimus is ability to teleoperate the robot. Since the robot is near identical in physical features as a human (similar strength, joints, degrees of movement of limbs etc.) teleoperating optimus is trivial for trainers.
Then these trainers teach r
Sexy sells (Score:2)
But you want sexbots to look sexy, human... (Score:2)
Self driving (Score:2)
Some reasons (Score:2)
What does she look like? (Score:2)
Failure of imagination (Score:2)
Using a robotic arm on a mobile base to pick up something heavy, "it's like I'm a little teapot and you become very unstable," she said, bending at the waist.
So the only way to stabilize the arm - even dynamically - is to attach it to an imitation of a human body? I'm pretty sure a few generations - or maybe a few millenia - of structural specialists would beg to differ. The builders and users of cranes might also have something to say about this.
Re: (Score:2)
the only way to stabilize the arm - even dynamically - is to attach it to an imitation of a human body?
It's not the only way, but it's the best way for something our size. Nature doesn't have to make things symmetric. Our own bodies are examples, as several internal elements are asymmetric. But it does it anyway (different parts of our bodies being examples again) because it's good. Having an equal-size arm on each side means having an equal counterbalance available.
You could of course do the same thing with a symmetric robot on a wheeled platform. It wouldn't have hips, but it would still need a waist or eq
Re: (Score:2)
+1 insightful - thanks.
RRRRight!! (Score:2)
I was taking part in some Honda competition for this purpose, and remember my reconsidered stance was exactly that: we should not fake human. As we should NOT fake AI images for the snapshots of reality or creativity from the person. Falseness of AI must be condemned, closed, and ceased to irritate by misleading. Thanks for all the added intelligence.
Robot balance (Score:2)
Humanoid, no. Unix-composition, yes. (Score:2)
A humanoid robot is like, I dunno, Windows 98. Why? The Unix idea - do one thing, and do it *well* - is a far better solution. In addition, if one breaks, you get to replace it with an equally-inexpensive one, not have to replace the whole damn thing because it's all integrated and sealed (for their CEOs ROI protection).
I just wan a robot that (Score:2)
I just wan a robot that will carry my beer and get me home. That's it.