I've kind of given up on humanoid robotics, because of how bad the actuators are. There has been no innovation in robotic actuators since Honda's Asimo. There's just no way that someone wants a 80kg wobbling tin can in their home or workplace.
My bet is that the final robotic revolution will use genetically modified human/animal bodies with replaced brains. You'll have to stretch your ethics a bit, but if you grow a bear genetically modified in a way that it has no consciousness or thought, it'll make a much better construction worker than any humanoid robot. You'll just need to wire it up with neuralink and then control it via LLM. Fast animals can be used to deliver packages, and giraffes for warehouses.
I’m not even sure if you are joking there or haven’t thought your proposal through. Sure giraffes are tall, but they can barelly lift any weight. What use would a robotically controlled giraffe be in a warehouse?
> There has been no innovation in robotic actuators since Honda's Asimo.
I very much doubt this. If nothing else the MIT Cheetah’s actuators are a whole different ballgame compared to asimo’s actuators. (Backdriveability, variable stiffness) And then there is a lot of interesting work being done with combining elastic elements with the actuators.
Well, a giraffe could do jobs where you need to reach high, such as replacing a lightbulb. Sure, I'm half-joking.
Asimo used BLDC motors with strain-wave gearing, which is pretty much standard today on high-end humanoid robots. The only thing that has happened is that these are much cheaper today, and might be slightly more optimized.
Actuators on modern humanoids use cycloids or planetary reducers, not strain waves. They are much more compliant and backdrivable because of the huge reduction in reflected inertia.
this is a tangent but you should revisit your assumptions about giraffe anatomy. their necks actually weigh a tremendous amount and are kept upright by an interesting system whereby they actually stretch this giant tendon to bend down and the tendon's tension lifts it back up. super cool to learn about - they dissect one in a documentary series I can't think of just now.
> this is a tangent but you should revisit your assumptions about giraffe anatomy
I don't know. This is the scenario i was thinking of: I imagine a giraffe taking a palette of goods (maybe 1200kg) into its mouth and trying to lift it off from a high shelf. I don't think that will go well for the giraffe. Totally normal load for a forklift, impossible for a giraffe.
The other scenario I was thinking of: Giraffe picking items from totes, but the totes can be very high. Each individual item is light enough for a giraffe to not immediately break its neck. But I would not be surprised if the repeated stress of raising and lowering its head hundreds per hour would break something in the giraffe's body. If you ever seen a giraffe bend down to the ground you see that it is a whole operation. Plus the items will be all covered in giraffe saliva.
> their necks actually weigh a tremendous amount
I didn't doubt that for a second. What I doubt is that they have any useful capacity to carry extra weight besides their own neck/head. Like economically useful capacity. What work could a giraffe do in a warehouse which doesn't break the giraffe if it is doing that work all day every day for years.
It was Richard Dawkins dissecting it IIRC in front of a lecture hall where he makes a point that if there were a God designing animals, he wouldn’t have made this insane thing.
Cortical Labs has been doing work in this area. They had a Doom demo a while ago.
I think it's a matter of tradeoffs. Perhaps you'd have biological version as a versatile all-around thing, but many tasks don't require that so likely the tin variants are more durable for many tasks. Also, in terms of reasoning, the brain bandwidth is very low and high latency so there are advantages to silicon chips there.
It's interesting to learn actuators are "behind". I kept seeing cool stuff in the 3D printing space and thought there's a lot of progress. I'd love to learn more.
That seems like a problem orders of magnitude harder than making a humanoid robot. We haven't even figured out how to make hamburgers without cows at a marketable price yet.
> We haven't even figured out how to make hamburgers without cows
Isn't that OP's point? Engineering muscle and sinew is harder than coming up with the control software. The cheapest way to a robot thus emerges as just taking the natural stuff and adding an artificial brain to it versus trying to re-engineer the bones and muscles with metal and plastic.
That is a truly terrifying future to imagine. Fortunately I would hazard to guess the medical technology to accomplish something like this is very, very far away. Not only because of the raw technological challenge, but also the barriers to development that scientists, doctors, and engineers would face before even being allowed to conduct experiments.
I do agree though the humanoid form is a dead end for robots. Just build giant cubes that process inputs and give outputs, like a dishwasher. Why wash dishes with meat wand tentacles or try to recreate meat wand tentacles when you can accomplish the job in a wholly different way with far greater efficiency...?
Where's the clothes foldeing cube? Analogous to the clothes washer and clothes dryer.... the clothes folder...
Why stop at dishwashing...? Sell an entire integrated robotic kitchen.
Dedicated machines can obviously solve an issue more efficiently, but it’s still good to have a machine that can do most things adequately.
As an example, you can have an automated washer, dryer, and folder, sure. But what if you wanted to automate the retrieval of dirty laundry and the delivery of clean laundry ? That would need to be some sort of robot to travel throughout an environment (fit through human sized areas, open doors, walk steps) to collect and deliver things. And if I have a robot roaming around the house, I would prefer to just buy one robot that could do many things rather than have to buy it to just collect things and more expensive machines as well.
I think the only real barriers are ethical. I'm pretty sure we'll figure out to do a completely synthetic biological robots without any kind of biological brain in the next 10-20 years, and they don't even have to resemble animals or humans. This should alleviate some of the ethical issues.
> if you grow a bear genetically modified in a way that it has no consciousness or thought, it'll make a much better construction worker than any humanoid robot
I could not disagree more with the claim about no improvement in robotic actuators.
The torque density and price of actuators has fallen dramatically since Ben Katz's MIT work on mini cheetah. The actuators on the Unitree G1 based on that work are powerful for their size and near quasi-direct-drive. The motors on the BD E-Atlas are completely passively cooled and appear to have really good torque density. Actuators have never been improving faster than they are now.
Exactly, the last year or two has been insanely innovative for actuators, with some new material combinations, approaches and multiple startups that are starting to scale up their innovations in this space. Give them a few years to sort out the vaporwares and the robotics revolution will begin.
Can't really name them off the top of my head, sorry!
But if you look up on Google or X, there are multiple companies doing things like pressure based actuators (Clone robotics) or mesh-based knit ones, new forms of EFAM, some new soft actuators and more.
G1 is a small robot designed for agility, and can't do much real work. That's why it uses lower reduction actuators with low sustained torques, and it'll overheat easily in continuous work. Many of the larger robots (Optimus, Figure, BD Atlas) use higher reduction actuators with strain waves or planetary roller screws. They're designed for higher sustained torques, but are also less agile and less safe for humans to be around. They're also quite heavy (BD Atlas is 90kg), and still can't match human performance.
yes, for heavy lift and bulk manipulation high gear ratios are still necessary. Maybe someday cable drives will be feasible. No question that we are not at human performance yet or that there isn't a ways to go. This is the specific claim I was arguing against:
> There has been no innovation in robotic actuators since Honda's Asimo.
I believe we are 100% making tangible progress and the technology is improving faster than it ever has.
The world can't support the number of bodies on it already, and you're proposing adding mindless meatbags that still need feeding and their waste managed? Are you going to accept an amazon package that's had giraffe poop sprayed on it while picking, or change your meat-robot's diaper? I didn't think so.
My bet is that the final robotic revolution will use genetically modified human/animal bodies with replaced brains. You'll have to stretch your ethics a bit, but if you grow a bear genetically modified in a way that it has no consciousness or thought, it'll make a much better construction worker than any humanoid robot. You'll just need to wire it up with neuralink and then control it via LLM. Fast animals can be used to deliver packages, and giraffes for warehouses.