This is an excellent write-up and has successfully changed my opinion on something I think will prove critical in the near future: I always laughed at humanoid robots, assuming they were being built for "comfort" reasons. I now realise this is almost certainly the most reliable way to solve the general robot problem - not just for the reasons the OP lays out, but because the whole world is already built for human-shaped agents anyway.
It's not just that the world is built around human-shape, but it's also that humans are very, very adaptable. Our hands are a marvel of evolution allowing us to do extremely precise tasks while still being adaptable to all kind of movement : Screwing in, out, grabbing weird shape in 6dof, rotating along several axes, ... And ours arms, our legs, etc, have similar benefit. As an example, we are not a fast specie, but we can walk on even ground, rough ground, steep inclined, we can climb rock and more. If you see a place, you can probably go there.
This is why human are still used for many, many tasks, including in industry where a lot of things are handle by robot. Yes, you can have an automatic belt feeder, or moving tray system, to move pcb from the pick and place machine, to the furnace, to the assembly, etc. But it means your assembly line is fairly rigid. Accommodating a new process, a different size of pcb or whatever become a costly endeavor. A human on minimum wage can cheaply move things from machine to machine, check if everything is alright in the process, adapt to new processes, new floor layout, very easily and cheaply.
Robot don't need to be exactly human shape, but having robot with the same adaptability has human have a huge advantage for companies where adaptability is a core part of the business.
The difference is whether or not a factory is designed with robotics as the driving principle or with human labor as the driving principle. They will be completely different, and as a result a lot of those things that would cause issues are simply engineered away.
This only works for high volume / low margin. Humans excel at rapid change - for now.
Yeah, for all we know there's a creature at the bottom of the ocean that's just as intelligent as humans, but it's hard to build a civilization with fins.
> but because the whole world is already built for human-shaped agents anyway
not really, there's several non-humanoid shapes that can easily adapt the human shape and to it but it's a little out of the box. you can imagine it without imagination, too, with a little thinking. it's just a few rational hops, really.
Is the issue also a lack of available sensor data?
Our own nerves produce a huge amount of data. Our eyes and balance also contribute to a very rich picture to enable movement and kinematics. This is all fused into usable feedback.
Arms on fixed axis with disconnected vision feel like we are still very far away from true robot training.
That is part of the problem. Yes, humans are absolutely studded with sensors, every hair you've got, every nerve ending. It's amazing that all that information gets processed as fast as it does even though the 'base clock' is rather low. There is a ton of pre-processing done on those signals though (for instance: the optical nerve is pretty much an extension of the brain, how is that for a high speed, high bandwidth interface). Then there are the reflexes, semi-autonomous parts of the nervous system that can react faster than the brain to deal with safety related concerns. For a very interesting biology angle have a look at octopi.
I read once analysing EEG (brain electrical activity) data is like standing outside a football stadium and trying to understand what the coach is saying from the roars of the crowd.
Can always skip the real world for training and evolve the controller in simulation.
Currently working on modernizing SIGEL (2000-era project at the University of Dortmund), which uses genetic programming to evolve walking programs for simulated robots in a physics engine.
Some of the 'evolved' walkers so far can be found at youtube.com/@virtualspecies
Differnent kind of beast entirely compared to what NVIDIA is doing, but then again it's fun to see what evolution comes up with - and it works on humble hardware too
The feed back loop is getting reduced by those new ways of training, simulation and video generation with realistic physics is kind of changing the game.
Like said by others, the sensor problem is a real one, and personally I don't see a robotic hand matching the dexterity of a human one, within a viable economic cost and sufficient robustness, before a long time (but I could be wrong ).
But for the part that concern physical understanding of the world, adaptability, and basic manipulation, it feels like the field is going through a break through.
The implication might be the apparition of generalist robots, that could perform (in the limit of their dexterity) on a wide range of tasks, commanded by natural language.
Sure, not on pair with human dexterity yet, but as a thought exercise, think of all the things you could do with simple claws, or heavy glove. What if a robot was able to do the same ?
This is an excellent write-up and has successfully changed my opinion on something I think will prove critical in the near future: I always laughed at humanoid robots, assuming they were being built for "comfort" reasons. I now realise this is almost certainly the most reliable way to solve the general robot problem - not just for the reasons the OP lays out, but because the whole world is already built for human-shaped agents anyway.
It's not just that the world is built around human-shape, but it's also that humans are very, very adaptable. Our hands are a marvel of evolution allowing us to do extremely precise tasks while still being adaptable to all kind of movement : Screwing in, out, grabbing weird shape in 6dof, rotating along several axes, ... And ours arms, our legs, etc, have similar benefit. As an example, we are not a fast specie, but we can walk on even ground, rough ground, steep inclined, we can climb rock and more. If you see a place, you can probably go there.
This is why human are still used for many, many tasks, including in industry where a lot of things are handle by robot. Yes, you can have an automatic belt feeder, or moving tray system, to move pcb from the pick and place machine, to the furnace, to the assembly, etc. But it means your assembly line is fairly rigid. Accommodating a new process, a different size of pcb or whatever become a costly endeavor. A human on minimum wage can cheaply move things from machine to machine, check if everything is alright in the process, adapt to new processes, new floor layout, very easily and cheaply.
Robot don't need to be exactly human shape, but having robot with the same adaptability has human have a huge advantage for companies where adaptability is a core part of the business.
The difference is whether or not a factory is designed with robotics as the driving principle or with human labor as the driving principle. They will be completely different, and as a result a lot of those things that would cause issues are simply engineered away.
This only works for high volume / low margin. Humans excel at rapid change - for now.
Yeah, for all we know there's a creature at the bottom of the ocean that's just as intelligent as humans, but it's hard to build a civilization with fins.
> but because the whole world is already built for human-shaped agents anyway
not really, there's several non-humanoid shapes that can easily adapt the human shape and to it but it's a little out of the box. you can imagine it without imagination, too, with a little thinking. it's just a few rational hops, really.
Is the issue also a lack of available sensor data?
Our own nerves produce a huge amount of data. Our eyes and balance also contribute to a very rich picture to enable movement and kinematics. This is all fused into usable feedback.
Arms on fixed axis with disconnected vision feel like we are still very far away from true robot training.
That is part of the problem. Yes, humans are absolutely studded with sensors, every hair you've got, every nerve ending. It's amazing that all that information gets processed as fast as it does even though the 'base clock' is rather low. There is a ton of pre-processing done on those signals though (for instance: the optical nerve is pretty much an extension of the brain, how is that for a high speed, high bandwidth interface). Then there are the reflexes, semi-autonomous parts of the nervous system that can react faster than the brain to deal with safety related concerns. For a very interesting biology angle have a look at octopi.
Exactly. I suspect the problem isn't just the amount of training data, but how much of the relevant information is missing from it.
I read once analysing EEG (brain electrical activity) data is like standing outside a football stadium and trying to understand what the coach is saying from the roars of the crowd.
Here is a good video on the subject by nvidia, very fun prez:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y8aq_ofEVs&pp=ygUKbnZpZGlhI...
PS: It's sad that robotic does not seems to get a lot of traction on HN :(
Feedback loops are too long with anything real worldly
Can always skip the real world for training and evolve the controller in simulation.
Currently working on modernizing SIGEL (2000-era project at the University of Dortmund), which uses genetic programming to evolve walking programs for simulated robots in a physics engine.
Some of the 'evolved' walkers so far can be found at youtube.com/@virtualspecies
Differnent kind of beast entirely compared to what NVIDIA is doing, but then again it's fun to see what evolution comes up with - and it works on humble hardware too
The feed back loop is getting reduced by those new ways of training, simulation and video generation with realistic physics is kind of changing the game.
- https://www.nvidia.com/fr-fr/ai/cosmos/
- https://dreamzero0.github.io/
- https://generalistai.com/blog/gen-1.5
robotic is waiting for its chatgpt moment
You do not think that the chatgpt moment is happening right now ?
Is it? Genuinely asking.
Like said by others, the sensor problem is a real one, and personally I don't see a robotic hand matching the dexterity of a human one, within a viable economic cost and sufficient robustness, before a long time (but I could be wrong ).
But for the part that concern physical understanding of the world, adaptability, and basic manipulation, it feels like the field is going through a break through.
The implication might be the apparition of generalist robots, that could perform (in the limit of their dexterity) on a wide range of tasks, commanded by natural language.
Sure, not on pair with human dexterity yet, but as a thought exercise, think of all the things you could do with simple claws, or heavy glove. What if a robot was able to do the same ?
Here is a set of links to feed your though:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y8aq_ofEVs
- https://generalistai.com/blog/gen-1.5
- https://dreamzero0.github.io/
It's a really good article, thanks!