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Comment by pinkmuffinere

12 hours ago

Feel free to ask for more details if you have specific questions! I worked in robotics for many years, I have some decent familiarity with this space. Here’s some more detailed thoughts “for free”:

Humanoid robotics are largely a publicity stunt. Our actuators, sensors, and algorithms are better adapted to other form factors. The nice thing about humanoids is that you (in theory) don’t have to change the interface, since they can use the same interface humans can use. In practice that doesn’t hold well, because we don’t have great force/pressure sensors to cover large areas like human skin. Likewise, it’s difficult to apply the fine forces that are sometimes needed (grabbing an egg, moving a joystick, etc). And there’s risk of the robot doing something unpredictable, so you always have to set a good safety bound around it anyways. In the end it’s often better to adapt the process to modern robotics, rather than the other way around.

There are many good practitioners that write about these and other limitations, I think Rodney Brooks has some good discussion of it, eg. https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dex...

Apart from dexterity, bipedal machines are unstable and require dynamic adjustment to stay upright, as I understand it.

The mechanism humans use to stay upright after an unexpected loss of balance, flailing etc., would not be safe to be around when a robot employs them.

There's also the idea that a humanoid robot can learn to imitate human action just by watching it, thanks to AI magic!