Rodney Brooks believes that humanoid robots are a bubble condemned to explode. Anyone says it: Brooks was the co -founder of Irobot, the company that manufactures the famous robots aspirations of the Roba family.
Too nice to be true. This expert, who before Irobot worked for decades at MIT, does not believe that in the future we live surrounded by human robots. Observe skepticism the developments of companies such as Tesla or Figure, who work in robots that learn to move as humans. In a new essay He talks about this type of way of thinking about the future “is pure fantasy.”
The bottleneck of skill. In his opinion, the problem is that trying to imitate the skill of movement of a human hand – for example – is an almost impossible mission. Especially since there are 17,000 specialized tactile receptors (and that detect pressure, vibration, texture or sliding) that it is not possible to find in humanoid robots. There is, however, concrete advances in this area.
Insufficient training. According to Brooks, “we don’t have that kind of tradition for touch data.” This area is different from what has been achieved with other areas such as language recognition or image processing. In his essay he explains how learning based on visual videos of humans performing tasks are not enough for robots to acquire that skill.
An experiment. To reinforce his theory, Brooks commented on how in an experiment a person was anesthetized the fingertips to analyze the skill of his hands. In this experiment it was seen how the person took four times more to complete a simple task such as lighting a match. The touch sensation, says this expert, is irreplaceable.
Tree goes. But it also warns of the security risks posed by these robots. Keeping them standing requires a lot of energy, he says, and if they fall they can end up being A real risk. The reason is that as explained by the kinetic energy of its limbs, it is amplified by the Law of Scale.
Robots with tweezers. For him the “humanoid robots” of the future will be of everything but humanoids. Instead in 15 years what we will see are robots with wheels, several arms, industrial tweezers and specialized sensors. The huge current investments that technology companies are making will not crystallize in that theoretical mass production of humanoid robots.
China does believe in humanoid robots. Brooks’ arguments are powerful, but the truth is that China is demonstrating have an absolute faith in it future of this segment. The current humanoid robots are limited in their benefits and capacity, but the investment in this market and the advances that are being made are undeniable. What will have to be verified is whether that human skill and tactile perception end up in effect insurmountable obstacles for such robots.
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