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this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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Futurology
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I'm surprised more people aren't aware of how rapidly robotics are currently developing. The same LLM AI that is capturing public attention with generative art and ChatGPT is equally revolutionizing robots.
Here's an illustration of it. This is the closest I've seen yet of a mass-market-priced and extremely capable robot that could sell in tens of millions around the world. This looks close to the type of robot you could bring to many workplaces and get to do a wide range of unskilled work. How long before we see fast food places fully staffed by robots like these? At the current rate of development that seems only 2 or 3 years away.
What's the use case, though? There really isn't much benefit to humanoid form robots outside of looking good to human aesthetics. Much of what robotics and automation would be good for don't actually require humanoid forms.
Navigating human environments. Imagine a team of these robots toting moving boxes down the stairs of a third floor apartment and loading them into a truck.
Assuming it actually works good. Right now they're probably going to get a limb caught irrecoverably on a doorknob.
Yes? A triped robot would have just as much ease navigating human environments, while having much more stability. Same logic applies to arms and joints - there's no real reason to limit it to what humans have, it would likely perform much better in other configurations.
Seems like a tripod robot would offer little benefit over a bipedal one while having more parts (costing more).
A total inability to fall over or navigate any terrain regardless of roughness isn't a benefit? Increased manipulators would also increase productivity / capability, probably much more than making up for increased cost.
Your argument is essentially that the human form is the best possible one imaginable, which I find highly doubtful.
My argument is that humans have built our cities to be navigated best by the human form, so that in that environment it is the best form. In most terrains a quadruped form is better.
Put it this way - does it seem like cats and dogs have any trouble navigating our environment?
The dog shaped robot is $70,000
Current prices are meaningless. It's not mass production or retail pricing. I doubt the components actually cost more than a few hundred dollars. It's an extremely limited niche market and prices are based on what will get them the most return on their R&D budget, not anything resembling production cost.