Highly specialised robots might be more efficient overall, but you lose the agility of being able to quickly give them tasks and repurpose them.
A lot of smaller businesses would take a general human shaped robot that they could visually and verbally give simple commands to (move all these boxes from here to over there, intuit that the stack needs to be stable), over some giant arm that they need to program/can't go outside/etc, even if it is more efficient at some specific set of tasks.
There's a reason Amazon are still using actual humans and barely organised heaps of unrelated products in a giant warehouse for a lot of their dispatch centres.
I'll grant you that, but why would such a robot need to actually look human? Legs can be useful in a few corner cases, but 3 or 4 of them would be more stable, or maybe just a compact set of wheels. Why does a robot need a face, or an area that looks like one? To do human work better than a human being (disregarding the never tired/complaining issue), a robot would need to be physically superior too. Strength can be such an advantage, but why stop there? Even as a human, I've wished that I had more than 2 hands, eyes in the back of my head, or simply a much greater range of motion in the ability to turn my waist and neck and other joints.
Seems to me that making robots look human is purely cosmetic and emotional, but limiting in functionality unless their function is to interact with humans.
espcially if your talking about moving things around a factory or store. I'm suprised forklifts aren't autmated already. they don't move fast I wouldn't think next gen kinect would be sufficent to detect obsticals find pallets. if you need something to go upstairs hand it off to something with flippers or legs. Also, I could see something like the assitant in Ironman with one arm and mobile being useful. Maybe some with suction cups as end.
A lot of smaller businesses would take a general human shaped robot that they could visually and verbally give simple commands to (move all these boxes from here to over there, intuit that the stack needs to be stable), over some giant arm that they need to program/can't go outside/etc, even if it is more efficient at some specific set of tasks.
There's a reason Amazon are still using actual humans and barely organised heaps of unrelated products in a giant warehouse for a lot of their dispatch centres.
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