Advice From iRobot: Forget the Humanoid Look
Speaking of robots, there are those who like arms and legs and those who don't. Japanese automakers who are demonstrating androids in Washington, D.C., say the machines must move like humans to exist in our homes, with all our stairs, furniture, and other obstacles.
But the only company to successfully sell robots into homes says no to appendages. "Forget the anthropomorphic features," says CEO Colin Angle of iRobot. His company has sold millions of the Roomba vacuum cleaners and Scooba moppers. They look more like round trilobites crawling on the floor than they do humans.
Arms and legs look good, but they're too expensive for the function they add, Angle says: "Humanoid robots are never going to be practical."
Tags: technology | robots
Tools: 
Share
|
| Comments (6) | Print
Reader Comments
Function vs Style
Insisting that a robot must be structured just like homo sapiens is about as reasonable as insisting that all aircraft have flapping wings.
Yes, humans react emotionally to anything with arms and legs. They also respond to wind-up toy animals. As a matter of fact, they tend to attribute personalities to anything that moves, such as cars.
There will eventually come a day when we will have the sophisticated software needed to be able to make good use of multiple DOF arms in household environments. However, that will be many years into the future.
Terminator
If a robot has humanoid characteristics and can step into an assembly line job previously occupied by a human, couldn't it reproduce itself?
Once it can reproduce it can evolve. Once it can evolve its like a life form.
Makes the Terminator films seem a little less far fetched.
I expect them to enter our factories first
They already have capabilities for many simple tasks that make up factory work. Asimo can walk, run, serve at table. The Toyota ones can even play the fiddle. Combine their capabilities and what do the lack? OK, it would be good had they been a bit more able to creep and jump, but when the big money enters the industry it will come. Still they would almost already come in handy compared to a normal industry robot - they move on their own, they can take the results of the work an carry it to the next workplace. They can soon work at an unchanged human manual workplace. Working three shifts they even the prototypes can be payed off in reasonable time. The Japanese says their aiming for service jobs, I´d expect them to show up in factories first, the job cycles are shorter there. The Japanese robots still lack a generic program enabling them to learn our tasks as they go, but they will get it soon. Pricing wont be a problem when they have are produced in millions annually. I expect them to come out of the labs soon!
advertisement
