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NAO Humanoid Robot Set To Hit the Market
KentuckyFC writes "Earlier this year, Paris-based Aldebaran-Robotics picked up $8 million in venture capital funding to help commercialize its NAO humanoid robot. The target market for this device is research labs working on the next generation of robotic hardware and software. Today, the company has posted a detailed spec of NAO on the arXiv saying that it expects the robot to cost about $15,000 each. That's cheap compared to other humanoids. Fuitsu's HOAP humanoids cost $50,000 each and various estimates price Honda's Asimo at $1 million per bot, although they are not for sale. Aldebaran-Robotics says that NAO's cost should come down to about $6,000 as production ramps up."
A hundred years from now, whether the readers are C or Fe, they will get a feeling of nausea reading about the 'retail prices' of 'humanoids.'
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
If it can't reach the beer in the fridge, then who really cares.
Asimov's universe has robots being banned on Earth, robot colonies dying, and robotics itself dying as well, with R. Daneel Olivaw being the only remaining robot in a galaxy with no non-human sentient life (except on Gaia, where everything is sentient).
I think Asimov's robots will be about as like the real future's robots as his Multivac is to the internet. I don't see robots being banned.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
You are right that robots are built to serve a specific purpose, but keep in mind that most robotic functions are ones that were previously done by us humans. So it's quite possible that one day we will want a robot that performs some human task that requires human proportions, such as carrying our bags while at the same time navigating stairs and fitting through doorways or even into cars.
Of course, we could also want robots for companionship, in the same way people find comfort in pets. But in that case, we'd design the robot to look like Robin Williams.
Specialized robots are useless outside their function, and are thus just expensive deadweight when not in use. For example, a Roomba is great at vacuuming a floor, but when the floor is clean it can't do anything else. It can't carry boxes or wash dishes. You'd need additional robots for those specialized tasks, and they're going have the same "deadweight" problem as the Roomba too.
A humanoid robot would be able to do any physical job that a human could do. Such robots would be versatile enough to be useful all the time. A single humanoid robot vacuums the floor, then it carries boxes, and then washes dishes, and then etc etc etc. A humanoid robot would always be useful in some way, and thus more efficient in the long run.