Re:Figure 01 has learned to make coffee
by actionfromafar on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @06:13AM
(#38924773)
Agreed with caveats. A good general robot would still probably have similar mass to a human, appendages with similar reach, and so on. A horse carriage and a modern car have similar sizes, can take similar amounts of cargo and seating, and take up similar space on the road.
So a good generic bot needn’t be an android, but in that ballpark.
For example robotic vacuums and lawn mowers have been around, pretty cheap, and pretty good for some time.
There's lots of home chores that a wheeled robovac with telescoping arms & really good vision could accomplish very well (empty/load dishwasher to/from sink/cabinets, light kitchen work, dusting, sweeping, etc). To deliver this in humanoid form you need to solve all the same vision/arm articulation problems, PLUS all the self balancing/walking/look&feel stuff of a humanoid.
There's actually stuff a robot could do better than me if it had a telescoping arm instead of being humanoid look&feel focussed (dusting / reaching high places etc).
To me it conflates 2 problems and overcomplicates to focus on the humanoid form factor at this stage.
And look at the evolution of some tools - cars do not really look like horse drawn carriages for example. Helicopters don't look like flying cars.