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Why the Uncanny Valley Doesn't Really Matter
malachiorion writes "Are humanoid bots and CGI characters still crawling their way out of the Uncanny Valley? Maybe, but maybe it doesn't matter. Here's a cold, hard look at a popular robotics theory that might have no legs to stand on, android or otherwise. It's everything that seems wrong and irrelevant about the Uncanny Valley that I wasn't able to fit into this month's Popular Mechanics cover story on social bots."
I think it's weird that some people have a fascination with humanoid robots in the first place. seems like most Japanese robot efforts (at least those that make the press here) are in that vein. sure, there's a golden place in the future for replicants and sex slaves, but to me those seem like fairly narrow niches. if I'm designing robots with the goal of getting useful stuff done, I certainly wouldn't start with a humanoid layout, with all respect to evolution ;)
I admit it, all the Japanese robot coverage I see is either kawai-oriented or thinly-veiled sex-slave oriented (or both). no doubt that only reflects my taste in paper an online media...
there's no Uncanny Valley for Roombas.
Many biologists think that dog attack cats and dolphins attack sharks for the reason that the latter of each pairing is too similar to the former of each, that the former might draw the comfort of familiarity until the revulsion of what appears to be an abomination of one's own species at closer inspection -- an "Uncanny Valley in the wild" so to speak. Are dogs and cats friendly once they've become acquainted? Oftentimes. Are sharks and dolphins friendly after becoming acquained in a controlled environment? I'll leave that as an experiment up to the user.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Let's worry about it when robots that fall into this scenario actually exist.
love is just extroverted narcissism
with all respect to evolution
Humans are a small niche in biological evolution. Most creatures are very well adapted for specific environments and life strategies, which I presume is the underlying point you are making about how robots should be designed. If you have a recent model new car that is midrange or higher in price, you have a robot. Roombas, appliances with computers in them, washing machines, dishwashers, robots all. We just haven't been calling them that.
TFA says that
- it may be more nuanced than people originally thought [i.e. the "absolute level of human-likeness" may not be the problem, but mismatched levels [great skin, awful eyes don't go together and are jarring]
- may have gender bias
- seems to depend on you viewing something remotely in 2d vs interacting with something real in the same room [the latter didn't seem to engender the same creepyness in those tested]
Since I don't live in japan nor do I visit robotics labs, I don't have much occasion to interact with near-humanoid robots. So my UV experiences are limited to movies and video games.
I remember seeing the Final Fantasy: Spirits Within movie in the theater and just minutes into the movie I was convinced I was looking at real humans. Or rather, there was nothing in the film that made me dissociate with the characters; they were as "real" to me as watching actors. I kept trying to "zoom out" of the movie/picture and try to critically evaluate the job they did rendering the characters, but I kept defaulting to treating them as humans and getting sucked back into the movie. Mission accomplished on their part, i guess.
I think the UV effect is definitely apparent in 2D matter -- as a fan of anime I am more inclined to "accept" characters that are absolutely impossible.. both physically and emotionally.. but which do not attempt to persuade me they are more than they are. Yet when video game makers get something slightly wrong it _is_ a jarring experience. I've seen video game cutscenes where there are clearly a lot of polygons and textures and art time involved...but something just seems off and instead of you being wowed [or ideally, _not wowed_] you are left feeling disappointed. You know everyone worked hard to try and make the scene but they absolutely did not pull it off.. and the game experience is worse as a result. Mistakes that land your artwork into the "UV" category turn people into videogame/art critics instead of people enjoying an interactive experience.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
It was the first virtual world which I could see as real, which I didn't have to pretend otherwise because all previous efforts has give-aways that it was fake. It looked goood (and if you sat through the credits, the masses of names hint towards the work needed to make this so) and that's why it's so successful and a breakthrough, imo.
Humanoid robots are great as they can use the same tools as humans can and can more easily relate to humans. Why build several $5,000 domestic chore robots that need special tools when you can buy one $20,000 humanoid robot that does all of the shores, need no special tools to clean the toilets, do the dishes, and vacuum the floor except the cheap tools humans already use. Plus make it so you can shag the robot so that makes it win-win... Kinda hard to have a relationship with a Roomba....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
went on their famous expedition, there was a black guy in their group, york
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_(explorer)
the native americans would stand in slack jaw amazement at york, as if he were possessed of magic. they never saw a black man before. york would further dumbfound them by taking out and reinserting his false teeth
meanwhile, consider the cantina scene in star wars: aliens of extreme forms, and humans mingling in with them as if no big deal
both the cantina scene and york's experience are the truth: our amazement at first is profound and very real at seeing new ethnicities/ life forms. but it also wears off very quick
we can get used to interacting with anything. the uncanny valley is real, but its also very temporary
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Check out the Rack on that Android. Is it a drop in?
Go Go Gadget Implants.
I think it's weird that some people have a fascination with humanoid robots in the first place.
Everything we have is designed to work with our humanoid bodies, so if we want to make a device that interfaces with those things, it will work better if it shares the humanoid design.
You can't take the sky from me...
Kinda hard to have a relationship with a Roomba....
I take it you've tried?
Wasn't impressed with the article.
He calls the Uncanny Valley "a groundless thought experiment", when it's really a simple description of a phenomenon that I (and presumably many other people) have experienced.
He goes on to say that people aren't frightened by humanoid robots. My experience with the uncanny has never frightened me. It's more of a vague repulsion and an emotional disinterest.
He then goes on to talk about a series of robots that aren't nearly human-like enough to trigger the uncanny valley phenomenon. Honestly the phenomenon seems much more relevant to the computer graphics world than it does to robotics at this moment in time.
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What I said in the Popular Mechanics comments:
Apparently in all his research on the Uncanny Valley the author missed or ignored the oft-remarked reason why the phenomenon *is* important: robots are expensive, and if people don't like them in their *first* impression, it's not worth the cost. 'Social' robots are not going to be seen in homes first, that's too expensive. The first market for social robots will be in some form of customer relations where replacing hourly employees makes business sense, but NOT if that means customers leave for whoever still has real people.
So yes, people can adapt to robots, duh, we're rational animals. However, if somebody is expecting a person, they get a robot, *and* they feel uncomfortable about it, even for a few minutes, that might be enough of a catalyst to consciously OR unconsciously cause them to look for services not provided by robots, ultimately damaging the company that bought the robot to fill the role.
Also, you allude to studies that show that the uncanny valley may not be 'real' for women but may be so for men. After all, Mori himself was male, maybe he what he thought applied to everybody only applied to his male experience. That doesn't mean the uncanny valley doesn't exist, it just means it isn't within the parameters originally believed to be understood. Basically by citing the study, you admit that it has been scientifically shown to exist, just in a more limited sense. Hardly discrediting.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Asimov's robots were nearly all humaniform, and the reason is simple and explained in the stories -- we have a lot of tools that have been designed to fit human hands and feet and eyes and ears. Wheeled robots can't cope with stairs, so legs are the logical choice (although it could be said that three or four might be better than two). Lets see your Roomba clean the stairs! Now, had you a humaniform robot you would have no need for a roomba, as the humaniform robot could operate your existing Hoover, as well as your dishwasher, lawnmower, etc.
At least one Asimov robot wasn't humaniform. The short story "Sally" had vehicles outfitted with positronic brains.
Free Martian Whores!
And, anyway, robot technology is improving every year, and as such they're doing their best to cross the uncanny valley and getting better all the time. Meanwhile, on this side, we're doing our best to cross to their side, led by Michael Jackson, Cher, Tila Tequila, and Jocelyn Wildenstein.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I think a key problem here is simply that humanity has evolved elaborate behaviors and telltales for communication even without intent. For example, in a store there are distinct differences in the behavior of someone looking for something versus someone walking purposefully to a destination. Irritation is easily transmitted. What this means is that for the typical human, there are limits to how well they can deceive another human. I think that's one of the causes of the uncanny valley. If you're in the valley, then the behavioral cues either cannot be interpreted or even worse are merely a skin that can be readily changed.
Violations of these behaviors and evolved protocols can really upset us. For example, a scene in Terminator II shows the evil robot of the movie (which can take anyone's form that it kills) has earlier (unknown to the audience) taken over the form of a woman talking on the phone to her son. The audience senses something is wrong, the dog is barking hectically outside and the woman is trying suspiciously to milk the son for information on his location. She gets the name of the dog wrong. It's only then that we know she's the killer robot. Right after the call ends, we find the robot also killed the husband of the woman while casually talking on the phone. Think about that. Someone who can chat on the phone without even a trace of emotion or extertion while killing a person at the same time. Bladerunner explores this to great extent (the opening scene is a great example). Silence of the Lambs is in part about a hideous serial killer who shows no remorse and reveals of himself only what he wishes.
We are scared of people who can lie and kill without the deed showing in their behavior and that fear is readily milked in many movies about murderous robots and calm psychopaths. I believe this is part of the uncanny valley. We've evolved over time to share a common nonverbal system of communication. Anything which can exploit this system, be it beings that don't look quite right or can deceive us completely and effortlessly, triggers a warning in us.
Dogs are domesticated wolves...who live and hunt in packs. If the cat is an accepted member of the pack, it will be tolerated by the dog. This is a vast oversimplification, of course, but what it comes down to. Man has selectively bred dogs for specific tasks since domesticating them...so we have dogs for hunting, herding, security, and companionship. Depending on which tasks the dog was bred for will determine whether it's sociable with other pets. Even then, there will be variation between individuals of the same breed and while some breeds are more cat/pet-friendly than others, each dog is still an individual and results will vary. If they dog accepts the cat or cats as part of its pack, there's no problem. If the dog doesn't have a strong prey drive, it may just ignore the cat. Either way, it has nothing to do with the Uncanny Valley.
I'm sure you can imagine a humanoid robot being a bit more comfortable to be around than something out of the terminator series at the doctor's office as an example.
"What? My appointment with doctor Smith isn't until four o'clock?
I'll be back."
You'll be back? Well I should certainly hope so, my silver-skulled simpleton! Late for your last appointment, early for this one, it's a wonder you ever should turn up at all, you Meat-packed metal moron, you colossal chrome cretin!
Oh, the pain, the pain of it all...
Bow-ties are cool.
There's only a handful of tasks such a machine would be optimal for
Including replacing most of the service industry.
, and just having a human do it will still be the better choice for quite a while.
I think I'd rather live un-optimally, with a Maidbot 4000.
After all, I am strangely colored.
What do you expect, Mother? I'm HALF MACHINE!
--Buster Bluth
i would not recommend building any kind of cannon into a robot designed to serve us, just in case...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
You kind of misunderstand the phenomena. The reason all the things you listed are easy-to-take is that they don't even look remotely close to humans.
The uncanny valley refers to the emotional detachment towards CGI creations that look and behave *almost* (but not exactly) like real people. A good example would be the recent CGI Beowulf movie, or another poster mentioned Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within from a few years ago.
The theory is that the less human a creature looks/acts, the more we can accept it. Pilot or Rigel from Farscape don't look human at all, for example. As the creature approaches realism, the viewer will have more and more trouble accepting them. Once your simulation is sufficiently complete, then you accept them as you would an actual human actor. That's why porcelain dolls are so creepy.
So you take Rigel, easy to accept. The humans in Beowulf, much less so. Some would argue that the aliens in Avatar are close enough to human that people accept them without any problems, which partially explains why the film has been so successful.
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Human contact has been replaced by machines lots of places like bank clerks who has been almost fully replaced by online banking and cash machines, or how about ticket machines or vending machines? I have a dishwasher and washing machine, none of those are built the way I'd wash dishes or do laundry. The point is not that machines suck at being useful, it's that they suck at being humans. I'd rather in fact not have a clippy interface to my machine if I can help it. Why does everyone seem to think a humanoid robot would be such a great solution? Would you like to piggyback on a humanoid robot to work every day? Do you honestly think it's good design to command a robot to use a remote control to tune your TV when you could command the TV to tune itself?
Don't get me wrong, eventually we will need some sort of general robot but my home could be a lot more intelligent than it is. There's no universal "bus" that things expose themselves to, and I don't mean building a special house full of special tools that are all built to work together. I mean something that'll be pretty much as basic as electricity and everything announces itself and lets me turn on and off lamps, turn up and down the heating, tune the TV, monitor the oven (maybe not set that one), check the status of my washing machine all in one dashboard right here, without getting my ass off the chair. That would at least be a start...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Humanoid robots terrify me to no end. At first, I was simply bothered by the fact that people were trying to develop this technology. I couldn't understand what new functionality they were trying to develop, and I didn't see why they would simply try to duplicate the existing functionality of human beings (since there are already billions of us around).
Now that I've thought about it, I think the new "functionality" they want to add is compliance. They want to say to something, resembling a person, "do this" and have them do it without talking back. Basically, they want someone to serve them without ever having to consider that person's needs or feelings. They want someone to go and take car of their mother or their children for them, so that they don't have to. They want someone who will have sex with them for no reason other than their desire for sex.
So some day, the hope is, we will be surrounded by human-looking robots who will cater to our every whim and never give us any trouble. I don't think that's good for us, and I question the mental stability of someone who would want to live that way.
Everything we have is designed to work with our humanoid bodies, so if we want to make a device that interfaces with those things, it will work better if it shares the humanoid design.
To an extent. A humanoid form for domestic robots would seem useful but we see that a roomba does a pretty good job and it's nothing more than a flat disc. If you look at conversion kits to turn standard human-operated trucks into remote vehicles, they're admirably utilitarian with a set of stereoscoptic cameras mounted where a human head would go but with simple servo-operated levers for controlling the gas and brake and a neat little set of rubber gears for gripping and turning the steering wheel.
If we were to ever invent a general-purpose robot, one capable of doing many tasks, it might settle on a human form. Right now our robots tend to be more designed for the purpose. A roomba whirls around the room but does not lift furniture, does not have an attachment for getting between the cushions, etc. An automatic car wash is basically robotic and looks nothing like a human while doing the same work. They're usually worse at it than a human but all you'd need to fix that deficiency is mount some cameras so they can really see the job they're doing and have an articulated pressure washer and scrubber arm to get at the dirt that's not coming off. Computer vision systems are getting to the point where they really could identify clean and dirty with cars off the street. Previous example of computer vision system were like the ones the potato chip companies use to sort bad spuds and they check the incoming potatoes against a known list of acceptable potato colors.
There's a whole field of biomimicry that seeks to borrow nature's solutions for various engineering problems. While nature can develop some very interesting techniques, it's important to remember that the process is not guided and also has to work with the materials at hand. The common example given is wing-flapping flight. It's not very efficient but modifying limbs to flapping surfaces is about the best you can do. Same goes for terrestrial locomotion. Wheels are awesome but there's only one axle we've ever found in nature and it's on a microscopic organism. Anything bigger than that is pushing itself around with limbs.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
A primary reason that humanity is so successful is because we are general-purpose, but also because we have the ability to use tools. Robots can be designed to cut out the middle man and become the tool itself, or they can be more general use and still require tools or swappable arms/interfaces.
So think about it, do humans REALLY interface with the items we build? If so, why are there eventually 2 versions of these created items: "standard" and "ergonomic"? It's because the standard ones never are actually designed for humans to a T, and ergonomic versions attempt to rectify it. Also, humans are so different from each other in terms of size and agility that most of our interfaces do not exactly match even the average human being. Robots don't have to suffer from this problem, although they surely will have to handle deviation in the environment.
Humanoid robots are potentially successful in certain areas like teaching--although Disney's "Crush" the Turtle exhibit seems to work quite well for a lot of people--but until we get to the point where biomimicry is successful to the point where robots are commonly sexualized (plausable acceptability), we may as well continue creating robots that are fitted to a smaller number of uses in specific niches.
Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
He only briefly mentions the Polar Express movie that had a really big uncanny valley problem.
If you have seen the movie, you know what it is, it looks at once so real and at the same time is a Bugs Bunny cartoon. The two just don't match.
There is a reason movies like Madagascar, Wall-E, Up etc despite being drop dead gorgous use clear cartoony looks ESPECIALLY for their characters. And while it is acceptable for the plane in Madagascar 2 to bounce like cartoon plane because it is clear that no matter how accurately it is rendered it is NOT a real aircraft. But the train in Polar Express DOES look real and real trains do not behave like that.
It is the superman problem. Spiderman can swing from wall to wall because it slightly makes sense, sense enough perhaps. Superman being able to lift an Island doesn't. Stopping a train. That has nothing to do with strength anymore, but with conversion of energy. He may be strong enough, but we know the ground isn't.
The uncanny valley is NOT something not looking right, but us knowing that the real thing looks or behaves different. It is why walking is SO hard to do in any animation. Most animation showing walking has a problem with slipping, it looks immidiatly wrong to us.
A robot, and no robot so far looks anything like a real human, just doesn't look real enough to trigger the feeling that it is wrong.
The uncanny valley is not restricted to animation or future robots. Ordinary humans got it as well, watch someone with a glass eye or scarring that is not obvious anymore but still large. Burn victim with a lot of corrective surgery whose face is close but at the same time a million miles removed. A burn victim with just a huge nasty scar might be shocking, but that is soon passed, but that face that is almost normal but isn't, that gets the constant stares.
The uncanny valley is not a theory or a measurement, it is simply the observation that people accept a :) as a face but a 99% realistic rendering is instantly picked as fake NOT for missing a pixel but because the eyes are at an unnatural angle.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Perhaps if evolution had given us wheels instead of legs, we'd be using ramps instead of stairs now.
And even more worrisome, human progress would have taken a great leap (!) forward when somebody invented the leg, way back in the Stone Age.
Most of those are just Machines. Robots should have a bit of autonomousness about them.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
That there is clearly a robot with a head of a human looking doll.
It is not even trying to appear human - it is trying to appear like a doll.
So, we file it mentally under "D for doll" or "R for Robot" and ignore the uncannyness as we are just approaching the valley.
The valley actually starts to show with examples like this, and Repliee.
And here is where TFA falls on its uncanny ass:
If machines can trigger cognitive dissonance in the human brain, roboticists must continue to carefully tweak their creations, to avoid individual revulsion and even a society-wide blowback.
That would be a major concern for the designers and manufacturers of the coming generation of social robots.
It would be, if the uncanny didn't evaporate on contact.
A Hypothetical Chasm
David Hanson, a roboticist whose company, Hanson Robotics, specializes in ultra-realistic robotic heads, actively seeks out the uncanny.
He keeps the motors in his rubber-skinned faces noisy and overtly robotic, and sometimes presents these lifelike talking heads mounted on a stick.
And for better or worse, even the shock value of Hanson's buzzing, decapitated heads doesn't stick around for long.
"In my experience, people get used to the robots very quickly," Hanson says. "As in, within minutes."
It is really hard to argue with an article that so blindly ignores the very topic it is talking about.
Its not the robots (of any kind - humanoid or not) that fall into the valley. We KNOW robots.
They are just another version of all those mechanical puppets that have been around for centuries.
It is the human simulacrum that freaks us out.
A photo of a nearly perfect humanoid head freaks us out because it registers as a human head that is "not OK" in some way.
We "feel" that there is something wrong with it.
But as soon as it starts to whir and buzz and click and move rhythmically like a robot - our perspective changes and it is no longer "strange and alien and wrong".
It "becomes" a robot.
That is why the photos of those supposed robotic inhabitants of the valley are freaky, while people find CB2 to be "cuddly" in person.
Or why this one becomes increasingly freaky once the camera zooms in to show just the face.
Instantly, it is no longer a robotic mannequin we are looking at, but a dead human head - smiling.
Then, as the camera zooms out, and the robot starts to move and talk - it is once again a humanoid mannequin, a moving statue, a robot.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Everything we have is designed to work with our humanoid bodies, so if we want to make a device that interfaces with those things, it will work better if it shares the humanoid design.
To an extent. A humanoid form for domestic robots would seem useful but we see that a roomba does a pretty good job and it's nothing more than a flat disc.
Exactly, it does -one- good job.
If someone breaks the android challenge, there's no need to redesign every aspect of human life with purpose-specific robots for every single job.
P.S. That logic was much better explained by Asimov, from whom I was convinced.
You can't take the sky from me...
A robot needs to do more than sit and place and perform a task (even if it is engineered to do it well). Such a loose definition does to the term "robots" what has been done to "cloud (computing)" and "nano (machines / structures)" that everyone wants to slap or back-date on their project to make it sound important / relevant.
As I see it, part of the definition of a robot includes movement. As with the roomba, it has the ability to move around to perform it's task and not be restricted to performing it's task in a single place (which would be a useless vacuum cleaner). In factories, robotic arms may stay mounted in place, but the arms themselves move themselves or parts to assemble cars.
I think the phenomenon labeled Uncanny Valley is perfectly valid and perfectly irrelevant. At least, as long as it's framed solely in terms of appearance. It's trivially easy for people to relate to Wall-E. It doesn't matter in the slightest that he looks only very vaguely cubically humanoid. He could be, in the great Disney test of yesteryear, an animated flour sack. As long as he appears to express emotions, the machine instantly becomes "he" to us. (Or she, depending on the mannerisms.) A walking talking RealDoll will still be a creepy failure as long as it doesn't move right. A box with treads will succeed, as long as it can act human (or possibly canine).
In desktop computers, it's the software that's inadequate, as every attempt at game AI demonstrates. In robots, there are still a few things that are inadequate in the hardware, but truly it's still the software. Roombas have zero personality.
Slashdot carried the story about the little robot let loose in Central Park a while back. It was nothing but a bump and go car with a flag on it and a sign saying "help me get to point X" and people actually did help it. Now consider what would have happened if it had been a Wall-E bot. I'd bet money that if a little robot hunched down, tapped his manipulator tips together, tipped his cameras into a configuration vaguely reminiscent of a worried expression and shuffled his treads, and held up a sign asking for help to reach point X that someone would have literally stopped what they were doing, taken his hand, and led him the entire way there.
It's the personality, stupid. (To coin a phrase...)
GP is saying he disagrees with uncanny valley theory, and you're saying that he's mistaken because UV-theory is true, he just doesn't get it. You may be right, but you're also engaging in circular reasoning. It would be better to say, "UV-theory contends that the reason all the things you listed are easy-to-take..."
Anyway, first of all, I would dispute that all of those things are "easy-to-take"... I never got into Farscape because I found it kind of...creepy. Perhaps I'm unique in that respect but nevertheless it seems to me that many people are creeped out by certain types of puppets (Chucky?) (Clown dolls?), by industrial robots, even by fake bugs and snakes.
Second, as we're putting up hypotheses, I would guess that the reason we like Muppets is because virtually every single person under the age of 40 has grown up with them since infancy, so they become part of the brain's notion of what is an acceptable deviation from the norm. I'd argue that the same also applies to traditional cartoons v GC. We grew up with traditional animation techniques as the default, so we quickly learned to accept Bugs Bunny et al. as acceptable. Yet I seem to recall being vaguely creeped the first few times I saw pre-WWII style animation with its weird puffing and undulating movements. I'd guess that a 21st century child is much less likely to find anything odd about CG animation than her parents do.
Third, (this is a criticism of UV-theory as a whole) I don't know that it makes sense to place the revulsion behind a poorly designed CG model under the same umbrella as one's potential revulsion over actual metal-and-silicone robots. CG is fake, an illusion, and while we may allow our disbelieve to be suspended, we still know that the animated character is safely detached from reality. On the other hand, a robot, a realistic one such as CB2, seems to (or perhaps does) possess the quality of agency. It interacts with the real world and can engage in unpredictable behaviour. So it might potentially get OUT! OF! CONTROL!, and harm us, and there's something possibly off-putting about that. Or, until I've accustomed myself to its movements and its failure modes, my limbic system will tell me that that huge industrial assembly line robot might malfunction and squish me like a bug, Whether it's "uncanny" looking or not. Or my future attack-dog-droid might mistakenly view me as a target, and make short work of me without the slightest twinge of remorse. That's a much more visceral concern to me than whether or not the attack dog's skin is too close in texture to real dog skin.
So I guess I agree with TFA, that UV doesn't really matter, at least when it comes to real bots.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Shouldn't that be gynoid? At least that's my preference.
It's lazy thinking, that.
If you want your floor vacuumed by your humanoid robot then you'll also need to buy him a vacuum cleaner with which to do it. Considering the low cost of computer equipment now, why not just jam a tiny electronic brain in the vacuum which you'll have to buy either way?
Same goes for most things. Why buy one car and one humanoid robotic chauffeur when you could just buy the car (which you have to buy either way) and stick a computer and a couple of sensors in it? Why have a shed full of gardening equipment and an android gardener when you could just bundle all your already-required tools into a handy automated bundle?
And that's not all of it. The idea of having a machine going around and controlling other machines by way of buttons and leavers it quaint- why wouldn't all of these devices just network with each other? Why have an android turn the steering wheel and push the pedals on a car (and designing it with hands and feet for just this purpose) when it could just connect (wirelessly perhaps) and order the car what to do? Why would it even need to be there to do that?
Far more sensible to have your big "house" computer nestled away somewhere, controlling all your devices for you over the airwaves. Like HAL, only with less psychopathy.