LivingCreatures- The Beginning Of 'I, Robot?'

An Anonymous Reader writes "LivingCreatures.com has released several new photos of the humanoid robot platform that it developed for the USC Interaction Lab. The yet to be named robot is about the same size as an 18-month-old child and will serve as a human-robot interaction (HRI) testbed for studies involving imitation, learning, and the effects that interaction with humanoid robots has on children."

Comments

Re:Humanoid Robots

[Dark Lord Seth]

However, if you model a robot after an average human, you can easily give away boring human tasks. Even public ones. For example, you could design a special excavator robot, a special pipeline construction robot, etc. However, you can also make 5 standard humanoid robots and put one in a normal excavtor, have one fit the piping, etc. Remember that everything so far has been designed for human use.

Also, I think it would be easier to deal with humanoid robots in public space then lumbering machines.

Doing Right Things and Doing Things Right

[powerpuffgirls]

Why are we trying to create robots that are smart, interactive and intellingent like human? We can't even create a human the way we wanted it, why do we think we can on a machine?

Shouldn't we concentrate on making robots doing the things right, i.e. doing the assigned tasks right, instead of trying to design robots that can decide what are the right things to do.

Re:Doing Right Things and Doing Things Right

[no longer myself]

The immediate use of these "primitive" humanoid robots is probably going to be limited to entertainment and novelty, but you touch on a point that is at the very heart of why we attempt to create humanoid robots: We want artificial "friends" to do what we can't persuade actual humans to do for us.

Essentially, it's giving people the ability to say, "Hey, you won't scratch my back? Fine. I'll just go out and buy a robot, and then I won't need you at all!"

It's the social equivalent to masterbation, and yet I still want one.

face only a mother could love

[Pilferer]

Jesus Christ that's creepy!

A good read for anyone making "robots" : the uncanny valley

This is just a little TOO "deformed child" for my taste.

The economic effects of humanoid Robots.

[Moderation abuser]

Truly economy shaking. AI will have to advance significantly in order to handle our environment, I can't think of a reason it couldn't advance to the point where it can outperform most humans. This means that 90%, 95% unemployment (euphemistically called leisure time) will be the order of the day. The world economy will have to change.

Robot?

[TechniMyoko]

Robots are single function machines like the ones ford uses. The multipurpous ones shaped like a humanoid are called androids

Re:Robotic capability is accelerating

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

In 2001, I was working in Chicago. Many of the McDonalds there were using a robot drink dispenser. As soon as an order was keyed in, a rotating platform would have a cup dropped onto it, where the thing would rotate the cup underneath the correct fountain and dispense the drink, to be rotated again for a lid to be popped onto it. Was interesting how it would react to multiple drinks when they weren't all the same flavor. It would put all 4 cups down, then rotate back and forth so that the flavors were in the order keyed in, presumably so that stupid wageslaves wouldn't get them mixed up when handing to customers. Seemed like it would be rather reliable to me.

And practically all of the stores I've been to have the french fry basket dispensers. Seems a small step to have the thing drop the baskets into the fryers.

I do agree about the burgers, which seem more difficult, but what about the rest of a fast food joint? Many of the tasks, including "building" the sandwiches seem easily within the realm of automation.