Elon Musk’s recent announcement on Twitter that “Tesla will have really useful humanoid robots in low production next year for internal use at Tesla” suggests that robots with physical human characteristics and “really useful” functions could be here soon.
But despite decades of trying, useful humanoid robots have remained a fiction that never quite seems to match reality. Are we finally on the verge of a breakthrough? It’s pertinent to ask whether we need humanoid robots at all.
Tesla’s Optimus robot is just one of many emerging humanoid robots, joining Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, Figure AI’s Figure 01, Sanctuary AI’s Phoenix, and many others. They typically take the form of a bipedal platform capable of various walking and sometimes jumping abilities, along with other athletic feats. Mounted atop this platform can be a pair of robotic arms and hands capable of manipulating objects with varying degrees of dexterity and tactility.
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 collaborate with humans, for example by carrying a ladder together.
They are also being proposed for work in the service sector, perhaps 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, such as the Riken Robear (admittedly this was more bear than human), 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 seems to generate less controversy. However, delivering humanoid robots in practice is proving to be a challenge. Why would this be?
There are numerous engineering challenges, such as achieving flexible bipedal locomotion on various terrains. It took humans about four million years to achieve this, so where we are now with humanoid robots is quite impressive. But humans are learning to combine a complex set of sensory capabilities to achieve this feat.
Likewise, achieving the deft manipulation of objects, which come in all shapes, sizes, weights and levels of fragility, has proven to be a difficult task for robots. However, significant progress has been made, such as the dexterous hands of 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 around it, robots’ tactile capabilities are limited to just a few points of contact, such as fingertips.
To move beyond automating specific tasks on factory assembly lines and improvise general tasks in a dynamic world, more advances are needed in artificial intelligence, sensory and mechanical capabilities. And if you want a robot to look human, there’s an expectation that it will also have to interact with us like a human, perhaps even respond emotionally.
But this is where things can get really tricky. If our brains, which have evolved to recognize non-verbal elements of communication, do not pick up on all the micro-expressions that are interpreted at a subconscious level, the humanoid robot can seem downright creepy.
These are just a few of the major research challenges that are already challenging communities of robotics and human-robot interaction researchers around the world. There is also the added constraint of deploying humanoid robots in our ever-changing, noisy real world, with rain, dust and heat. These are very different conditions than those in which they are tested. So shouldn’t we focus on building systems that are more robust and don’t fall into the same pitfalls as humans?
Re-creating ourselves
This brings us to the question of why Musk and many others are focusing on humanoid robots. Should our robotic companions resemble 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 accommodate our physical form. So an obvious choice is that robots should also take on this form.
It must be said, however, that our built environments and tools often assume a certain level of strength, dexterity, and sensory capacity that disadvantages a great many people, including those with disabilities. Will the rise of stronger metal machines among us further perpetuate this divide?
Perhaps we should see robots as part of the world we need to create, one 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, and more accessible to everyone.
It’s striking how 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 time and again in dystopian science fiction, from which the tech industry easily appropriates ideas.
Or maybe humanoid robots are a “moon shot,” 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 impressive technical innovations will likely come from simply trying.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Steve Benford receives funding from UKRI, EPSRC, AHRC and the European Union.
Praminda Caleb-Solly is Professor of Embodied Intelligence at the University of Nottingham. She is also the co-founder and Director of Robotics for Good, a Community Interest Company. She receives funding from the UKRI, EPSRC, AHRC, NIHR and the European Union. She is co-chair of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Committee for Robot Ethics.