How Close Are We to Humanoid Robots? (msn.com)
- Reference: 0179056986
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/09/07/0153219/how-close-are-we-to-humanoid-robots
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/artificial-intelligence/ar-AA1LWHCB
Agility Robotics "says its factory is designed to eventually manufacture 10,000 robots a year," the Post adds (with "some" of its robots "already at work in e-commerce warehouses and auto parts factories.") Amazon even invested $150 million in the 10-year-old company (spun out from Oregon State University's robotics lab) in 2022, according to the article, "and has tested the company's robots in its warehouses."
> The e-commerce revolution has spawned sprawling warehouses across the country where products must be organized and customer orders assembled and shipped, but some human workers have said the repetitive work is low paid and leaves them [2]prone to injury . Agility rents out its robots to warehouse owners it says have struggled to keep their human jobs filled, including logistics company GXO, which uses them at a warehouse for Spanx shapewear in Flowery Branch, Georgia, northeast of Atlanta. The robots pick up baskets of clothing from wheeled robots and walk them over to conveyor belts that take them to other parts of the facility.
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> Agility Chief Business Officer Daniel Diez said facilities like this represent a first step for humanoid robots into gainful employment. "This work gets paid, and we have eyes on large-scale deployments just doing this, and that's what we're focused on," he said. German auto parts company Schaeffler uses Agility robots to load and unload equipment at a factory in Cheraw, South Carolina. Auto part plants have become a favored proving ground for humanoid robots, with Boston Dynamics, the company famous for its [3]videos of back-flipping robots , doing [4]tests with its majority owner, Hyundai.
But meanwhile, RoboForce makes a robot that has two arms on a base with four wheels, the article notes, "providing stability and making it possible to lift more weight than a bipedal robot." Humanoid designs make sense "if it is so important to justify the trade-off and sacrifice of other things," RoboForce CEO Leo Ma tells the Post. "Other than that, there is a great invention called wheels."
Still, the article argues there's "a new drive to make humanoid robots practical," fueled by "the surge of investment in AI" combined with advancements in robotics that "make humanoid designs more capable and affordable."
> Years of steady progress have made legged robots better at balancing and stepping through tricky terrain. Improved batteries allow them to operate for longer without trailing industrial power cords. AI developers are adapting the innovations behind services like ChatGPT to help humanoids act more independently... The progress has triggered a frenzy of investment in humanoid robots and made them into a mascot for the idea that AI will soon reorder the world on the scale tech leaders have promised... Venture capitalists have invested over $5 billion in humanoid robotics start-ups since the beginning of 2024, according to financial data firm Pitchbook, and the largest tech corporations are also placing bets... Meta is working on [5]integrating its own AI technology with humanoid robots, and Google researchers are collaborating with Austin-based humanoid robot start-up Apptronik... A host of humanoid robot companies has spawned in China, the world leader in complex manufacturing, where the government is subsidizing the industry. Six of the 14 robots that shared the stage with Nvidia's Huang were made by Chinese companies; five were American.
"China's Unitree sells a 77-pound humanoid that stands 4-foot-3 for $16,000..."
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/artificial-intelligence/ar-AA1LWHCB
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/01/amazon-osha-injury-rate/
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/25/three-years-ago-he-could-barely-walk-now-atlas-humanoid-robot-is-doing-gymnastics/
[4] https://bostondynamics.com/blog/electric-new-era-for-atlas/
[5] https://ai.meta.com/research/publications/zero-shot-whole-body-humanoid-control-via-behavioral-foundation-models/
We aren't close at all (Score:1)
We can make a robot that can look humanoid and act a bit human. But we're 50+ years from a robot that has the manual dexterity of a human. We won't see a humanoid robot that can sculpt like Michelangelo or paint like Rembrandt for at least 50 years, if not longer. Our linear actuator/motor technology has plateaued for many decades with no foreseeable improvement. The only hope is some sort of artificial muscle tech, but materials tech in that field has also plateaued for a few decades.
Re: (Score:2)
> But we're 50+ years from a robot that has the manual dexterity of a human
... and in 50 years, we'll still be 50+ years away. Humanoid robots don't make any sense.
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Every children will want one. Predators like Mark Zuckerberg know it and would be able to molest remotely. The patterns are all right there in big tech full of incel pedo freaks.
Some of us are closer (Score:2)
Some of us are really close to humanoid robots, IYKWIMAITYD.
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Why do you want a robot that can sculpt like Michelangelo or paint like Rembrandt? We already have works by Michelangelo and Rembrandt. Copying them is unoriginal at best and fraudulent at worst.
It's also boring, and doesn't fit into modern cultural tastes. There's a reason museums struggle to get the public to come view centuries old sculptures and paintings. There's a handful of works everyone wants to see because they are iconic, like the Mona Lisa. But even that disappoints most people when they see i
Re: We aren't close at all (Score:2)
Don't even use the word "taste" to describe whatever the fuck is going on today. The public is starved of beauty, but age-old, foundational aesthetic principles, if they are even remembered at all, are still rejected for no sane reason. Museum attendance has nothing to do with it.
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> We can make a robot that can look humanoid and act a bit human. But we're 50+ years from a robot that has the manual dexterity of a human. We won't see a humanoid robot that can sculpt like Michelangelo or paint like Rembrandt for at least 50 years, if not longer. Our linear actuator/motor technology has plateaued for many decades with no foreseeable improvement. The only hope is some sort of artificial muscle tech, but materials tech in that field has also plateaued for a few decades.
AI-generated art seems to be unarguably on-par with the quality of michelangelo or rembrandt (setting aside the extent to which it is derivative or truly original), but I agree manual dexterity of physical robots seems to be lagging for some reason. My sense of it is that the problem isn't computational but physical. We can't seem to develop physical robots with the same raw weight/power/dexterity/flexibility ratios that animals posess in their muslces/skeleton. If we have a computer simulation of a cat
We've Been Humanoid Robots Since 1840 (Score:2)
..Since the Industrial Revolution.
What's the use case for bipedal humanoid form? (Score:2)
In the many videos I have seen of humanoid robots the two-legged human form is invariable awkward notable less useful than machine model. Even if you look at those incredible Boston Dynamics videos where the bipedal robot leaps around on boxes, dances, flips, you can appreciate the technical know-how that made it possible but wonder do you really need it? There are lots of constructions that would be better at everything except resembling a person.
The four-legged robot dogs make more sense. Much easie
Re: (Score:2)
Think about how slow rovers like Curiosity are. I mean, they are SLOW. They don't cover much ground in a day. I'm too lazy to look up why, before posting this (but I will after). But I bet it has something to do with not wanting to pick a shitty path that knocks it over and puts an end to the mission.
I can't help but think BD robots could cover more of that ground, and much more dynamically and perhaps autonomously pick a path. Easily. I think the problem there would be battery life and charging. A big as
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> The four-legged robot dogs make more sense.
I think I'd find it annoying to have an extra set of legs like a [1]Centaur [wikipedia.org]. The hind quarter would just get in the way most of the time, even though the extra stability would be useful in some situations - I suspect those situations would be in the minority. I think there is reason such things haven't evolved.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaur
I don't want a humanoid, I want my laundry done (Score:1)
You want to impress me? How about a robot of any kind that can fold a basket of laundry. That it - just take it and fold it, iron and hang up any dress clothes. Forget all the other stupid tasks and just do my laundry.
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Can't find a wife, eh?
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Now I am basically semi-retired, I do the laundry and cooking in my household, while my wife earns the big bucks, and I spend the rest of my day writing games that probably no one will play.
Hurry up and invent a laundry bot already! If it can put the dishes in the dishwasher and empty it again and take out the trash too, so much the better. If it can also do tiling and painting, it'd be really awesome, because my last bathroom tiling job cost $2000 in tiles but $12000 for someone to lay them - and frankly,
We *HAVE* them, they're just pointless. (Score:3)
They exist now. They're either small toys, or large horrendously expensive limited-purpose things.
The problem is that they're pointless. Anything a humanoid robot can do in an automated manner, a specialized non-humanoid robot could do much cheaper.
I don't need Rosie the Robot to use my regular stand-up vacuum cleaner. I have a Roomba.
I don't need a humanoid robot to sit in the driver's seat of a car to drive me around, Waymo exists.
I don't need a humanoid robot to stand in a factory using a spray can to paint a car, automated industrial robots that can do tasks like that (or welding) have existed for decades.
As for the "why"? (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of comments are just unrelentingly hostile to the idea of humanoid robots. Sure, industrial robots don't need to be humanoid. Welding together the frame of a car? Packing boxes onto pallets? Special purpose robots rule.
However, there are other use cases. First, any robot that needs to interact in flexible ways in the human world. Open doors? Move around in a room full of furniture? Grasp objects designed for human hands? Look at displays placed at human head-height? Obviously, a humanoid form will be most practical.
Second, robots that are designed to interact with humans in sympathetic ways. To take one of the most obvious use-cases: caring for the elderly. That is a hugely difficult and draining task: it is difficult to find enough people to do it, and do it well. Perhaps robots can take on some of the load, but: in order to be accepted by the patients, they will need to come across as friendly and helpful. That means humanoid.
What does it do? (Score:4, Insightful)
What exactly does Agility's robot do that can't be done just as easily by a fixed robotic arm with an attachment to grab and hold the baskets? The fixed arm would be cheaper and wouldn't have battery-life issues, and probably would require less maintenance (fewer moving parts). This sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
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A general-purpose humanoid robot with human-like intelligence and dexterity will be able to substitute for a human being. It's true that special-purpose non-humanoid robots may do a better job at specific tasks, but due to the economy of scale (commoditization) of mass-produced general-purpose humanoid robots, they will be available at a lower price than lower-volume special-purpose robots. That's my understanding of the theory, anyway.
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> This sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
A fixed robot is different than a mobile robot. Traversing stair cases and opening doors in the same trip is a big one I hear about. These companies want a general purpose robot that can interact in a human world, and fixed arms or other modals will not be nearly so easy to use in a house or factory. There are buttons at 1.5 meters high, and screens and handles and stairs and knobs and narrow paths.
Not saying they are useful or coming tomorrow, but that's really it. I mean even Doctor Who with the D
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If a job could be done by a robot arm it probably would be already. This is for replacing jobs that they need humans for.
In any case I expect that the revolution will start with China. They have some impressive humanoid robots already, but most importantly they have a huge number of companies producing and deploying them. They have already got the cost down by a factor of 10 on the dog style ones. It's probably already too late for Western companies to catch up.