Humanoid Robots. Again.

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From todays WSJ:

wsj.com - Humanoid robot hype use timeline

Even the Companies Making Humanoid Robots Think They’re Overhyped

Billions of dollars are flowing into humanoid robot startups, as investors bet that the industry will soon put humanlike machines in warehouses, factories and our living rooms. Many leaders of those companies would like to temper those expectations. For all the recent advances in the field, humanoid robots, they say, have been overhyped and face daunting [technical challenges] before they move from science experiments to a replacement for human workers. “We’ve been trying to figure out how do we not just make a humanoid robot, but also make a humanoid robot that does useful work,” said Pras Velagapudi, chief technology officer at Agility Robotics.

And further on in the story:

Company leaders say there is a narrow set of roles where humanlike robots make sense today, including performing simple, repetitive tasks such as moving boxes. Persona is building a welding robot for a shipbuilding company, a function Radford said is ripe for roboticization because the danger involved makes labor hard to find. For something like robot butlers, the market is farther off, he said. The cautious, if not downright gloomy, outlook by leaders and engineers of humanoid robot companies stands in contrast to forecasts made by some of the biggest names in technology.

To be fair, there is one paragraph quoting Musk and Huang, whose businesses rely on the enthusiasm of investors to keep their stock prices elevated. And to be fair to Albaby & me, there’s also a section where the story (and industry) question the need for a robot to be humanoid at all:

Ultimately, there is a more fundamental question to answer: Do we even need a robot with arms and legs? There are downsides to the human form: Robots that look like us are prone to tipping over and engineers struggle to create a mechanical version of the human hand. We rely on sensations from our skin to know how much pressure to apply, something robot builders struggle to replicate. Some engineers say the future isn’t in replicating the human shape but in improving on it, with four hands instead of two, or suction grippers instead of fingers. “My point of view is that we are sticking to the humanoid form too much,” said Max Goncharov, the chief technology officer at RemBrain. “In the factories, it’s all about efficiency, and efficiency means more specialized robots.” “I think humanoids will do a tiny layer of tasks in factories in the future,” Goncharov said.

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