Comment by Zigurd
2 days ago
There are half a dozen successful commercially available surgical robot products out there. None try to mimic a surgeon's hands.
Even if biomimicry turns out to be a useful strategy in designing general purpose robots, I would bet against humans being the right shape to mimic. And that's assuming general purpose robots will ever be more useful than robots designed or configured for specific tasks.
The reason people keep working on human-like hands for robots is: The world is absolutely full of things adapted to be operated with human hands.
Handling heavy boxes? Baking a cake? Operating a circular saw? Assembling a PC? Performing surgery? Loading a ream of paper into a printer? Playing a violin? Opening a door? You can do it all with two five-fingered hands.
>Handling heavy boxes?
Are handled by non-humanoid Robots already.
>Baking a cake?
How do you think modern industrial baking works? All done by non-humanoid Roboters.
>Operating a circular saw?
Seriously? A circular saw is the perfect scenario where a humanoid is useless.
>Performing surgery?
Why are surgery Roboters not humanoid? Obviously it is easier to give robots custom tools than make human tools conform to robots.
>Loading a ream of paper into a printer?
Do you know how a modern printing press looks like?
>Playing a violin?
Google "mp3".
>Opening a door?
ARE YOU SERIOUS? Do you think automatic doors don't exist?
It is far, far easier, cheaper, fast to make robots do a specific task than to make them do all tasks. Humans are terrible at most tasks, making robots to conform to humans is absurd.
I think it's important to note that many individual humans are adapted to only a few of these tasks. A construction worker's hands and a magician have very different muscles, skin thickness, grip strength, dexterity, etc. even though they can both wash a dish and open a door.
They have the same muscles, what do you mean? They are both humans. A construction worker is likely to have stronger hands, but by no means does that preclude them from performing a magic trick nor is the magician precluded from doing carpentry. It's likely they've done more than a few construction-based tasks in their life. It's even possible that one do both, it's merely choice and time that determine these things.
The idea of humanoid Roboters in a factory is truly hilarious. There is a good reason for the form of industrial robots and replacing them with humanoids is ridiculous.
What do you actually want to do with these humanoids.