this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Futurology
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The idea of making humanoid shapes is to provide more general flexibility for various tasks rather than a robot specialized for just one thing. It's the same reason for the goal of AGI vs. lots of narrow AI. There is a loss of effectiveness because of that, but the adaptability and universal nature perhaps could make up for it. It's true that doing it just because it's new might not always be the best solution. Other tools can be used as a hammer, but sometimes it's better to use the tool designed for the task rather than have one tool that does everything.
I mean, sure, but what is the point of legs unless you're using stairs, ladders, or uneven terrain?
Make its bottom half a forklift design. It gets more height variance and it's simpler to maintain and build. The tech ain't here yet.
If having flexibility is overkill for the job, then you're correct, as well as keeping it simpler. But look at Boston Dynamics's Spot and how many special purpose jobs it has been applied to by many companies. I recently saw a video about some electrical work that's dangerous and how they worked with BD to train the robot to be able to adapt to situations and remove operators from being there entirely. And there are other companies with their own version of Spot (although they don't seem to be quite as cutting edge).
If you have a basic warehouse setup and all the things being picked are similar, then a more basic automated picker certainly makes sense. Some places need more than that, so they use humans, or if something comes along that makes more sense than humans (for good or bad reasons) they'll use the new tech.