Most coverage of humanoid robotics has understandably focused on hardware design. Given the frequency with which their developers toss around the phrase “general purpose humanoids,” more attention ought to be paid to the first bit. After decades of single purpose systems, the jump to more generalized systems will be a big one. We’re just not […]
Industries may be ready for humanoid robots, but are the robots ready for them?
You could easily walk the entire Automate floor without spotting a single humanoid. There was a grand total of three, by my count — or, rather, three units of the same nonworking prototype. Neura was showing off its long-promised 4NE-1 robot, amid more traditional form factors. There was a little photo setup where you could […]
Humanoid robots are learning to fall well
The savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics produced two major robotics news cycles last week. The larger of the two was, naturally, the electric Atlas announcement. As I write this, the sub-40 second video is steadily approaching five million views. A day prior, the company tugged at the community’s heart strings when it announced that the […]
Robots can make jobs less meaningful for human colleagues
Much has been (and will continue to be) written about automation’s impact on the jobs market. In the short term, many employers have complained of an inability to fill roles and retain workers, further accelerating robotic adoption. The long-term impact these sorts of sweeping changes will have on the job market going forward remains to […]
Understanding humanoid robots
Robots made their stage debut the day after New Year’s 1921. More than half-a-century before the world caught its first glimpse of George Lucas’ droids, a small army of silvery humanoids took to the stages of the First Czechoslovak Republic. They were, for all intents and purposes, humanoids: two arms, two legs, a head — […]