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iRobot CEO: Humanoid Robots Too Expensive To Be the Norm
Movie robots often look like (and are portrayed by) people in bulky, bipedal suits. Why aren't more robots built along these lines? It's not just the problem of balance. Reader concertina226 writes "'Building a robot that has legs and walks around is a very expensive proposition. Mother Nature has created many wonderful things but one thing we do have that nature doesn't is the wheel, a continuous rotating joint, and tracks, so we need to make use of inventions to make things simpler,' [iRobot CEO Colin] Angle tells IBTimes UK. 'The reason it has taken so long for the robotics industry to move forward is because people keep trying to make something that is cool but difficult to achieve, rather than trying to find solutions to actual human problems. Technology can be extremely expensive if you don't focus.'" [Beware the autoplaying video.]
Lucas beat him to this conclusion.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Depends on your end goal. If you're trying to carry iron girders, you can give it 8 legs and a long body. If you're trying to eliminate the human resistance in 2029, maybe you eat the costs of implementing human-like qualities.
She had wheels, so using her (egad, I'm anthropomorphizing!) as an example may not have been ideal.
But that said, having a robot that can utilize the same tools and work in the same environments that we do can be extremely practical, and in my opinion still well worth the effort, because that means that the same robot could potentially be repurposed for many different tasks merely by upgrading or installing different software on it... The applications for such robots extend far beyond those of mere household maintenance... the only reason that keeps coming up, is because that's just the most obvious common consumer application, and it's entirely understandable why it's desirable.
Not everyone lives in a one-floor apartment, after all.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Tens of thousands of robots put together cars, furniture and other things every day. They don't have legs and most are bolted to a concrete floor and are little more than an arm.
The Roomba, Google's self-driving car, drones, spacecraft, the mars landers... we've made a shitload of robots that don't have legs. There's no shortage of non-legged robot research and production going on.
The CEO quoted in the article has a bug up his ass about one small area of R&D and is making idiotic excuses for why it should be eliminated. My hope is that gets in an accident and loses a leg. Maybe then he'll see the value in the R&D that's been done on robotic legs.
I got one of his Scooba 230 floor cleaners. He has a design and manufacturing flaw in the tube for the pump. The rotary pump head sits and pinches the tube to the point of collapsing it. First thing you need to do when you get it out of the box is to remove the base plate and work out the kink. Then the bladder got a hole after about 10 uses. They sent a new one, but damn they need to work on quality control.
I guess all the money goes into the robotics research and nothing goes into manufacturing. Smart brains, cheap parts.
... Daleks really are the pinnacle of evolution.
Who says it was cheap?
Look at how many hundreds of millions of years it took.
Now equate that time to capital investment....
Still think nature did it cheaply?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Many would debate whether the vacuum robots we can afford are worth it:)
But for projects like this one, looking humanoid is the only goal.
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The per unit costs on kittens is pretty low.
The capital investment was recouped at each stage over the hundreds of millions of years per evolution.
Yes, cheap.
This is a very good point, and for robots designed for a single task that obviously makes sense. But if they have to be able to move around a house or office (with either stairs or an elevator with buttons to push), or open doors, or put dishes away from the dishwasher, etc -- they'll need to be shaped roughly like a human. The more human-shaped they are the more easily they can integrate into a world designed for human-shaped things to get things done. The alternative is to redesign everything in the world to make LESS convenient for people to use them.
[nt]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Take a look at what happens inside a cell. Plenty of rotating joints and tracks. Ribosomes and flagella anyone? Wheels, I grant that. But the reason is probably that at the molecular scale they make no sense
Mostly random stuff.
With over 8 billion people in a few years, and fewer jobs, the obvious solution is humans mounted with something along the lines of Google Glass, telling them what to do, where to go, how to do it, when to speak, etc.
You're hired, they give you Glass, the computer tells you what to do, "go put more toilet paper in the bathroom" "clean up the parking lot" etc, humans are cheap and disposable because there are so many of them.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If it becomes technically possible to build a fully functioning humanoid robot, regardless of the price, then one will be built. Once this happens, Moore's law will start to kick in, as will the cost benefits of mass production. In fact all you need to do is to build a self-replicating robot, and call it skynet.
"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility." -- Lee DeForest, inventor.
It's not too expensive, it's just ahead of its time. The first microwave, VCR, PC... were all super expensive at the start. Cost scales to volume, if your only making one at a time, then yeah it's expensive. If your building them by the millions, then their cheap. The problem is... (Drumroll)... -NO KILLER APP- ( no pun intended) lol.
A lot of comments mention that it would make sense to make a robot along the same pattern as a human: Can use same tools, access same spaces, etc. etc. My question is: if your {AI | robot} can't be distinguished from a real human, why can't you just use a (cheap, ubiquitous) human? Answer: we invent machines precisely to augment our abilities, to do what we aren't so good at: computing faster and less error-prone, be stronger, access spaces we can't, don't get bored, tired, damaged by some harsh environments, etc. etc.
I'm with Angle: see what job (or collection of jobs) your machine needs to perform, then build the best possible machine given the contraints, for that job/s. (Not that they have achieved it with the floor suckers, but hey...)
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
I don't think there is an intelligent, focused process at work behind evolution.
I predict that within 100 years, robots will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
lose != loose
I wasn't suggesting that it did... only that it took an awful long time for evolution to do it... and equating that amount of time to how much you'd have to pay a worker even just one lousy dollar a day for that amount of time, it's really not very cheap.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So yes, there is a very good reason to design humanoid robots. Its easier than redesigning all our living spaces.
Maybe ... I don't see why that's a given.
A ceiling track for a small "industrial" robot with an arm, say, might be easier/cheaper than humanoid robots. I don't know that for sure, but I don't know that humanoid robots are easier for sure either.
Maybe I'm reading into it a bit, but I doubt the guy is so obtuse that he doesn't realize there's enough money to go around for the various forms of locomotion. I think this is just some defensive posturing he's doing in public to try and paint his company's products in a better light against the soon-to-be competition.
Here's what I see:
1) iRobot is a major supplier of defense and security robots currently in use by the US military.
2) iRobot's entire lineup is based on wheeled or treaded robots. There's no indications of them being anywhere close to fielding a walking robot of any sort.
3) Meanwhile, Boston Dynamics, a small company that wasn't yet a credible threat, has been working on both bipedal and quadrupedal robots for DARPA that are to the point where they're being field tested by the military.
4) Then, Google bought Boston Dynamics, meaning it suddenly has far more resources available to it than before, making them a much more credible threat.
5) And now, shortly thereafter, iRobot's CEO suddenly comes out trashing the technology used by the competition, just as that technology is reaching a point where it can start entering the market.
As I said, I might be reading into it a bit, but the timing and notions just seem weird. For instance, going back to the summary (emphasis mine):
The reason it has taken so long for the robotics industry to move forward is because people keep trying to make something that is cool but difficult to achieve, rather than trying to find solutions to actual human problems.
This is pretty clearly posturing on his part, since he has to be aware that none of his Roomba products can navigate stairs, an extremely basic and common component of building interiors. It's obvious that his products are not offering "solutions to actual human problems", or at least not to all of the problems, and he's scared that others will realize it too. It's good that he is, since his company isn't set up to deal with it, from what we know publicly.
The original Daleks couldn't go up stairs, so they'd be useless in my place. But they do have a plunger arm, which can be occasionally useful.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Look, the other day I watched a backhoe, barely bigger than a vending machine digging the smallest section of drainage ditch. I'm tempted to just rattle off a bunch of buzzwords and say synergy and 3D printing etc sixteen times. But the increasing complexity, intelligence and sophistication of computing power, software, sensors and things like servomotors is growing at a... Exponential? (Geometric?) INCREDIBLE rate and at some point, sooner than even I think, ten, fifteen years at the max, humanoid robots will be so cheap that they will, in fact be cheaper than actual humans. At that point the problem isn't how to develop and employ them, it's what to do with the 90% of humanity that can't do any job cheaper than a robot. The only jobs left right now are. 1: Guy that does a job robot cannot do. Doctor, Lawyer, Scientist, politician. 2: Robot trainer 3: Robot Repairman (See #1) 4: Guy who does a job cheaper than a robot, or a job a robot isn't willing to do. (These jobs suck ass.) AI, like Watson will continue to shrink categories, 1 and 2, and eventually category 3 will be taken over by robots. This is the real robot apocalypse, not murderous killbots, but they will have "TOOK R JOBS" and only folks who own the robots will have any realistic way to make money. The good news, for me, is that I'm kind of old, so it won't crush me. The bad news is that you probably aren't. We need to figure this out, now.
General humanoid robots in mass production are going to happen; it's just a matter of when and there will be ridiculous prices for the first ones that work. This should happen in less than 40 years and I'm hoping much sooner. The iRobot CEO seems to think specialized robots are going to be the norm.
Might be, but in our living spaces there are other considerations as well, namely aesthetics. I don't want a robot track in my ceiling. Besides, that ceiling track won't be very handy for outside chores.
Until somebody comes up with the über power source, all of this stuff is academic. Sure, I can build the Aliens Power Loader but it has to be connected to a big ass generator to work.
You know a TV from the 60s was pretty damned ugly. I also wouldn't call a dishwasher or a microwave beautiful (although a stove can be pretty damned sexy if you like to cook). But it's usefulness for most people overcomes the aesthetic implications.
If a robot with a track was useful enough, you'd install a robot track on your ceiling. And maybe as the robot evolved through the generations, designers might start getting clever about hiding it or making the track look sexy.
You know even in multi story houses the floor tends to be flat. And if you really did need to bring your robot upstairs you could probably just pick it up (just like a roomba).
Really this is all a non-issue....
Researchers have been making humanoid robots for much longer than they've been trying to make any of those other things you listed. And yet, such devices are still limited to doing simple tricks of little or no real value. In the mean time, robots designed for specific purposes (that look nothing like people) are used throughout society. Humanoid robots will always be much more complex, and much less stable, than their non-humanoid counterparts. So of course they will never be affordable because you will always be able to make a cheaper wheeled robot.
Also, it is baffling to me that anyone would throw away money on this line of research. The limits of this kind of robot should be obvious to all of us, since it would have all the same limits we do. But for some reason this idea is so compelling to the less logically minded masses that it attracts all kinds of money for research that is destined to lead nowhere.
Now it is difficult to do those kind of robots, because we didn't have the technology, but with trying to understand this and research into this we will be able to do it in a couple of years and 20 years on we won't even think about how normal and easy it is to build robots like that.. Not only humanoid robots benifit from this research, but also artificial limb-makers will benefit from it.. And people who lost their limbs will be gratefull to those scientists who went on to make these kind of robots and not those wheelie things iRobot is making..
Let's not forget iRobot is a commercial company with a lot at stake, so they're saying this for a reason...
But a robot that needed the track could not help out in the garden, or help carry the paving stones when laying the sidewalk outside. And since I didn't expect it to be needed in the garage, it can't even get in there to help me with auto repairs. I would have to install a new track going into the garage for the one instance where I might like some help in there. With such limitations on a robot, it would just be easier to not have one. Use the money spent on the robot and tracks and other upgrades needed for the house to pay a servant instead as they would be able to do anything I wanted them to do.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Bad logic. Robots and servants are not comparable.
A roomba costs $300. A cleaning lady will cost you at least $20 / time she comes.
While the cleaning lady will also clean the toilet, after a year of having her come you will have more than paid off the cost of the Roomba, and over the life of the roomba the cost per floor cleaning is probably quite small.
Very likely if such a trackless system were to come into existence a) it would be MUCH cheaper than a servant b) it would also not be as versatile than a servant, but it would be understood to the buyer what he was getting.
Additionally, if you did hire a butler he probably wouldn't be an automechanic as well. I could see in some cases a robot being MUCH more flexible than a human because you could simply pay the $100 to download the "garage" software if you wanted to use it there.
Lastly, I find it interesting that the crux of your argument is to try to find the places where a robot are not useful, and use that as proof that they're not useful anywheres. If a robot becomes commercially viable then for, a reasonable cost to the target market, it will provide some sort of help the target market wants. It'll probably have limitations (you won't have a track to your neighbors house to share the cost, either) but if it becomes viable people will still buy it because the trade offs aren't a show stopper.
My idea of use in the auto mechanic was simply handing me tools while I'm under the car or help lifting heavy items or something. There are lots of simple things a very basic bot could do. I do think a humanoid bot will be too expensive for a very long time, but ultimately that is the most useful shape for general interacting with the world we built for ourselves.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.