Elon Musk’s recent announcement on Twitter that “Tesla will have really useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year” suggests that robots with physical human-like features and a “really useful” function could be with us soon.
However, despite decades of trying, useful humanoid robots have remained a fiction that never quite seems to catch up with reality. Have we finally reached the crux of a breakthrough? It is pertinent to ask whether we need humanoid robots at all.
Tesla’s Optimus robot is just one of many upcoming humanoid robots, joining the likes of Boston Dyanmic’s Atlas, Figure AI’s Figure 01, Sanctuary AI’s Phoenix, and many others.
They usually take the form of a bipedal platform that can walk and sometimes jump in a variety of ways, along with other athletic feats. A pair of robotic arms and hands capable of manipulating objects with varying degrees of dexterity and tactility can be mounted on top of this platform.
Behind the eyes lies artificial intelligence that is tailored to planning navigation, recognizing objects and performing tasks with these objects. The most common applications for such robots are in factories, where they perform repetitive, dirty, boring and dangerous tasks and work together with people, for example carrying a ladder together.
They are also proposed for work in service sector roles, possibly replacing the current generation of more utilitarian ‘meet and greet’ and ‘tour guide’ service robots.
They could potentially be used in social care, where attempts have been made to lift and move people, like the Riken Robear (admittedly, this was more of a bear than a humanoid), and to provide personal care and therapy.
There is also a more established and growing market for humanoid sex robots. Interestingly, while many people recognize the moral and ethical issues involved, the use of humanoid robots in other areas appears to raise less controversy. However, it appears to be a challenge to realize humanoid robots in practice. Why should this be so?
There are numerous technical challenges, such as achieving flexible bipedal locomotion in different terrains. It took humans about four million years to achieve this, so where we are today with humanoid robots is pretty impressive. But humans learn to combine a complex set of sensing capabilities to achieve this feat.
Likewise, deftly manipulating objects, which come in all shapes, sizes, weights and levels of vulnerability, proves to be difficult with robots. However, significant progress has been made, such as the deft hands of the British company Shadow Robot.
Compared to the human body, which is covered with soft and flexible skin that constantly senses and adapts to the world, robots’ tactile capabilities are limited to just a few contact points, such as fingertips.
Moving beyond automating specific tasks on factory assembly lines to improvising common tasks in a dynamic world will require greater advances in artificial intelligence and sensory and mechanical capabilities. Finally, if you want to make a robot look human, the expectation is that it also has to communicate with us as a human and perhaps even react emotionally.
However, this is where it can get really tricky, because if our brains, which have evolved to recognize non-verbal elements of communication, do not perceive all the micro-expressions that are interpreted at a subconscious level, the humanoid robot can come across as positive creepy.
These are just some of the major research challenges already facing communities of robotics and human-robot interaction researchers around the world.
There is also the added limitation of deploying humanoid robots in our ever-changing, noisy real world, with rain, dust and heat. These are very different conditions than the conditions in which they are tested. So shouldn’t we focus on building systems that are more robust and won’t succumb to the same pitfalls as humans?
Recreating ourselves
This brings us to the question of why Musk and many others are focusing on humanoid robots. Should our robotic companions look like us? One argument is that we have gradually adapted our world to the human body.
For example, our buildings and cities are largely built to house our physical form. It is therefore obvious that robots will also take this form.
However, it must be said that our built environments and tools often assume a certain level of strength, dexterity and sensory ability, which disadvantages a large number of people, including people with disabilities. Would the rise of more powerful metal machines among us further perpetuate this divide?
Perhaps we should see robots as part of the world we need to create that better accommodates the diversity of human bodies. We could put more effort into integrating robotics technologies into our buildings, furniture, tools and vehicles, making them smarter and more adaptable, making them more accessible to everyone.
It is striking that the current generation of limited robot forms fails to reflect the diversity of human bodies. Perhaps our apparent obsession with humanoid robots has other, deeper roots.
The divine desire to create versions of ourselves is a fantasy played out again and again in dystopian science fiction, from which the tech industry readily appropriates ideas.
Or perhaps humanoid robots are a “moonshot,” a vision we can all understand but one that is incredibly difficult to achieve. In short, we may not be entirely sure why we want to go there, but just by trying, impressive technical innovations are likely to emerge.
Steve Benford, Professor of Collaborative Computing, University of Nottingham and Praminda Caleb-Solly, Professor of Embody Intelligence, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham
This article is republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
