While humanoid robots are neat, if not uncanny, I would love to see robots with forms optimized for their work. A large octopus with legs would be ideal for this sort of parts handling job.
I think the exact point they’re trying to make is that a humanoid robot can pick up one shift exactly where a human left off. No custom robotics, no workplace changes, etc.
This is huge for the industry. Smarter Every Day visited a frisbee factory and they had automated a bunch of things. However, every automation point was extremely protected (fenced off) so that a bumbling human couldn’t walk somewhere and get a limb ripped off. If I remember correctly they joked that it was OSHA or something, which it turned out to be.
The effort required to change a process shouldn't be underestimated.
Especially considered that industrial environments are already (a) automated for lowest-hanging fruit things (e.g. moving stuff around at human height) & (b) optimized around human capabilities for the remaining things. Substituting a not-humanlike robot would require reconfiguring a lot of existing automation around it.
If you have "like a human, but costs less" that can be plugged into any existing still-human process? You can literally swap them in.
Eventually we'll get to hyperoptimized machines, but an easier sales story to say "We automate your existing human processes."
When steam and coal engines gave way to gas and electric engines in factories, it took decades before factories were reconfigured to adjust to the smaller sized engines that didn't require one major axle running through the entire factory. As a consequence the first gas engines were huge - over time they shrunk. I bet the same will happen with robotics, where humanoid will be the primary form factor at first for general tasks, then more efficient forms will emerge as processes are updated.
These efficiënt forms are there. In use. Proven. Have been for decades.
Cranes, carts, lorries, conveyor belts (with vision), my robot vacuum cleaner, my bread baking machine, a car wash, a dishwasher, the ticket gates at the underground, the coffee machine at our office and so on.
Yet, there are still millions of humans working in factories.
There is value to the human form, our versatility and adaptability.
A machine that replicated a human would have incredible economic value (though not for the people whose jobs it replaced). A machine that exceeded a human in versatility, e.g. by having more arms, even more so.
Yes, there are. But that's not caused by lack of humanoid robots, but because these humans are rediculously cheap.
There's absolutely no way that automation and tech can undercut (effective) slave labor.Though already this is happening: your tshirts and socks are probably not hand-knitted by "Bangladeshi children" or Chinese "prisoners", but by machines tailor-made (pun intended) for t-shirt and sock-knitting. This is happening slowly, and in the supply chain there's still loads of manual labor - cotton picked and processed for these socks is more and more automated, but still requires armies of cheap farm-hands.
And then it's really hard to undercut the price of cheap "western" labor with full automation in many sectors. Part of that is due to some form of 90/10 rule: the last 10% of automation is magnitudes more expensive. And many automation leads to a higher TCO, as the people programming, maintaining and optimizing the robots are far more expensive than an "army" of low-wage workers.
Humanoid robots may be an answer in some future, but currently and in near future will certainly not solve these economics. If ever.
I think you're right, but the humanoid phase in manufacture will probably be an intermediate phase, for the reasons krunck points out. A 100% adapted to the function robot is where productivity is.
I keep hearing this but I just think it’s silly, for basically any factory, it’s trivial to change the configuration of a space so a better suited robot can operate rather than build robots that can fit into human sized spaces.
Yes there will be use cases but it just seems like a problem looking for a solution most of the time.
Optimization isn't efficient on the grand scale of things. Think of these robots more as exchangeable worker units. Lets say the warehouse isn't accepting many packages that day. So you don't need as many robots at the loading dock. But we have a lot of product that needs to be inventoried or shelved. Send a couple over and have them start doing it right away.
You actually end up running a warehouse with less robots because they can easily be repurposed for other duties.
Imagine you're working your 35-hour shift at the Fulfillment™ Center and all around you there's robotic eldritch horrors scurrying through the two-storey high shelves
Factory robots that move in general are kind of gimmicks, except for those roomba things for Amazon warehouses.
An assembly line with robotic arms has been standard for a long time now. And having many such arms working at the same time is normal. And each robotic arm will be doing one extremely narrowly defined task.
Anything involving autonomous judgment and mobility introduces uncertainty.
Neuralink-equipped wageslaves mind-projecting into robo-octopuses, traversing the storehouse-grid with the aid of their many-suckered appendages. Navigating via implicitly interfacing with the warehouse's AI overseer.
Even if you don't have an assembly line and more of a job shop. A stacker crane is a better transportation method and you can build each station to be able to load from the crane directly. So the only case where you need a robot arm is to take a part and put it in a fixture.
The legs do seem like a huge overcomplication. I can't think of many situations where they would be worth the added cost/complexity (compared to simple wheels). Sure they can walk stairs, but a place that employs freaking robots could easily make it robot accessible too, it would seem.
Did you see previous Atlas videos where this things jumps, does backflips and runs up stairs? The whole point is to make it operate in spaces designed for humans.
I liked the Tesla snake robot for charging.[1] But it upset many people.
It looks complicated but is a rather simple mechanical design. There are several motors in the base pulling on cables. The arm itself is just segments, disks, and cables. So all the complexity is in the base, and you can surround that with a metal or concrete box to prevent damage. Arm replacement wouldn't be too expensive.
Tesla is now touting wireless car charging, but that's a lot of power to transmit through air.
Bipedalism is great to evolve on uneven terrain. Here it seems to just slow the process. Also, it uses its second hand for balance instead of achieving work, a counter weight would be as effective. In a factory, where the floor is flat, a human sized self moving robot 2 or 3 wheels would be way more effective, longer arms with more joins that are not mimicking humans one could also be better. There is already a lot of automation/robots in industry and it never look like a human. Even in our houses the best approach to automation never look like a human (eg. vacuum cleaner). I think that the only part of our body that would worth copying is the hand.
Humans are precariously tall. Good for spotting threats but not for navigating terrain. Four legs are better, with a lower center of gravity. Look at mountain goats for example.
We already have highly specialized robots. They’re usually built for specific situations and are expensive and immobile. The goal here is to provide a robot that can fill as many roles as possible and the best template for that is humans around which the entire world has been built.
Or just a bunch of conveyor belts, magnets, clips etc. A "boring" but proven, optimized, sorting machine really.
Though the demo is awesome, the use case is bad. This "problem" of sorting and moving parts around, has long been "solved". It can be forever optimized, sure. But humanoid robots are definitely not that optimization.
