Comment by sheiyei
6 months ago
Ugh, still missed by a long shot. How about instead of a convoluted set of dozens of tiny, weak joints, there's a connection that delivers power (electric, pneumatic, torque, you name it) to any toolhead you want, and the robot can swap out like existing manufacturing robots do. A hand tool for picking things up may be reasonable in rare cases,, but even that won't look like a human hand, if it's not made by a madman. But yeah, let's prioritize a bad compromise of a humanoid with 5 000 joints instead of basically an arm with 10 joints that achieves the same thing, because little robot cute and look like me me
Alright, let's run this thought experiment further then.
You suggest a connector to connect to a set of robot-compatible tools, fine. That set is again limited by what the robot manufacturer thought of in advance, so you're out of luck if you need to weld things, for example, but your robot doesn't come with a compatible welder. Attaching and detaching those tools now becomes a weak point: you either need a real human replacing the tools (ruining the autonomy), or you need to devise a procedure for your robot to switch tools somehow by detaching one from itself, putting it on a workbench for further use, and attaching a new one from a workbench.
The more universal and autonomous that switching procedure becomes, the more you're in the business of actually reinventing a human hand.
But let's assume that you've succeeded in that, against all odds. You now have a powerful robotic arm, connected to a base, that can work with a set of tools it can itself attach and detach. Now imagine for a second that this arm can't reach a certain point in the car it repairs and needs to move itself across the workshop.
Suddenly you're in the business of reinventing the legs.