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.
Robotics could be much more efficient, require less maintenance and cause less havoc when malfunctioning. That alone reduces the amount of jobs required by a fair bit
Exactly, it really depends on the environment. Amazon warehouses and manufacturing facilities are already designed for robots whose form factor is far from human-like. But in the environments where humans operate, it's probably cheaper to design the robot around the human instead of having humans adapt to a robot-centric environment.
You are absolutely right. And this is reflected in the choice of robots deployed in warehouses.
For example, Amazon uses hundreds of thousands of simple wheeled floor-jack like robots to move the shelves around [1], and they started doing this many years ago.
Meanwhile, they have only a handful of humanoid robots, on experimental basis, trying to decide if they are useful [2].
They do some of the boring and physically demanding tasks. Robots bring the bins, but humans still stand there putting things into them or taking things out of them, and that is still incredibly boring, albeit necessary because those taks require visual acuity and fine motor skills, which are currently kind of hard problems in robotics and AI.
And even though those human jobs are standardized as much as possible, there are still inefficiencies in the system, many of which are (in my inexpert opinion) caused by the design of the bins and UI deficiencies in the stowing app. If Amazon really wants to improve employee efficiency, I think they could do well to invest more in their internal tools.
And this is why logistics companies aren't replacing humans with robots very quickly.
Simply put, robots today do not have the combination of speed, accuracy, gentleness, strength and 'hand-eye' coordination needed to do simple tasks that a 6 year old could learn in minutes.
You want a 4 ton pallet lifted from spot A to spot B? There's a robot arm that can do that same task over and over flawlessly. You move that pallet 12 inches to the left and rotate it 10 degrees? Best case, it realizes it can't do it and stops trying. Worst case, you have 4 tons of probably-broken goods thrown all over the place.
There's always examples of specific subsets being done well- a robot that can grab and align parts quickly (so long as they don't overlap and they're the expected parts); a robot that can carefully reach into a cluttered container and grab just one item (but only one item per minute vs a human's 20); a robot that can carefully lift an egg without damaging it (provided the egg is within acceptable size and weight bounds).
You want the whole package of skills? For now, you need a human.
Why is either of these a case for a humanoid robot, and not a specialized robot? Humanoid is a pretty awful design for any specific task; it's just that we've evolved and learn to be good at many tasks.
In the warehouse, you can adjust the design of the warehouse a relatively small amount to ensure that the robots can easily store and retrieve the packages—which come in a finite number of standard sizes and shapes, which in turn can be adjusted to ensure they pack well while still leaving room for the robot's grasping arm/claw/whatever to grab it. Depending on the specific designs, it may be worthwhile to combine the store-and-retrieve robot with the carry-cart. It's certainly not going to be more effective to have a humanoid robot that has to climb up ladders, rather than some sort of wheeled or tank-treaded robot that can anchor itself to the floor and extend a telescoping part of it up to get or leave the package.
For picking strawberries, even if we accept that you want "hands with the same dexterity and nuance as a human", why would those hands do best attached to a human body? Strawberry plants are pretty low to the ground, so why not put them on a little rolling bot that can go between the rows right at berry-level?
No; the best case for a humanoid robot is in human-facing positions. We like to interact with people, and a robot (note, not a human-level AI: a robot; human-level AI gets into serious ethical and philosophical quandaries real fast) doesn't care if you yell and scream at it. It'll just keep saying, "Yes, sir. Please give me your account number so I can proceed," for hours on end if need be.
In those specified areas it's also much simpler and more efficient to change the process itself.
Automated warehouses for example don't use legged robots that climb ladders, operate forklifts, and carry boxes around.
Interestingly, the bits of manual labour still required in these areas (e.g. factories) are cheap in terms of manual labour and not doable with the same level of efficiency with even the most sophisticated robots, let alone bipedal ones (you'd change the factory to accommodate to the simplest possible robot design, not vice versa).
I think it's a bit easier for businesses to reconfigure to change the essential job and make it easier for robots. E.g., a business can put guide wires in the concrete. I can do the same in my yard... but I'm not going to do it in my house.
Perhaps this is because the business is already slave to its function. The exact separation and makeup of businesses reflects efficient ways to split up problems and integrate with other businesses. It's possible to refactor that given a robot that can perform a certain kind of action that is not directly equivalent to one person's job right now.
But my home is my home, it serves me, I do not serve it. For instance, one could imagine redesigning clothing to make robotic cleaning and folding of clothing feasible. I'm not going to do that! But redesigning PPE for that process in a hospital is not at all unreasonable.
>mutli-purpose robots currently always are less robust than humans at the same set of tasks
Specialization has tradeoffs. Humans are very optimized generalists but very few of us become specialist at more than one thing. Even in that case a specialized machine/robot can be far faster, depending on the task of course.
Of course humans have a lot of trade offs for their abilities as generalists... taking years to mature, requiring sleep, poor integration with computer systems are just some of them.
Mostly only when dealing with tools designed for humans, you can generally design the same tools to be more efficient on a general platform base. And even if you do use them you run into similar problems with task planning and execution. Finally there's power issues with the humanoid shaped bots both in the strength of the actuators (it's hard to have both really strong, fast and precise all in a package that fits) and in providing power to the robot itself. The latter has been the death of many a walking bot intended for the military, batteries don't last long enough and gas power plants are loud and generally bulky.
No difference whatsoever. Robots don't build themselves yet, and don't program themselves either, so you'll still need a bunch of humans to do that work in the back. Or you will have people who will be willing to pay more to have a human touch instead of robots.
Robots may become more versatile, but the day they can be as versatile as humans is not going to be in your or my lifetime. I hope you realize that, unless you are a member of the "Church of Singularity" :)
It's more often a question of whether it's worth using a robot instead of humans. I'm pretty sure it's already possible to automate much more than what's already automated in a car production line. Sometimes, for a given task, it's way simpler to use a human worker than to design a state of the art robot for this one task.
my office adjoins a factory where we produce what we engineer in the offices.
The factory has two or maybe three different types of robots delivering all sorts of things from packages to packaging to stainless steel bar.
the robots use the same walkways as the humans.
It seems more and more we are designing robots to occupy and utilize the same spaces as humans. And we're designing the robots to make the humans give way: they're slow, large, bulky, and just stop when confronted. I think it's because humans are a much better robot.
humans (generally, of course) are more agile, can route easily, and move our bodies in unexpected ways to accomplish the task (lift a box up from waist height over an obstacle for example)
though I do get a LITTLE annoyed every time I have to walk around the stupid floor mopping robot in my local stop & shop
A benefit is having a multipurpose robot that can perform a variety of tasks that humans do using similar tools and techniques that we already use. I'm sure there's cases where that makes more sense than having more purpose-built machines.
Machines have nowhere near the flexibility of humans, so obviously they're worse at tasks in environments designed for humans.
But were you optimize the Boeing manufacturing process for machines, the way car factories are optimized, you could utilize strengths of machines while sidestepping their limitations.
(Why this does not happen often is I believe a combination of robots having high initial costs, coupled with products starting as human-assembled prototypes, and companies just optimizing that process incrementally, instead of redesigning it around machines.)
Amazon has been using robots in their fulfillment centers for years now, and there are plenty of public videos out there on those processes. But I don't see how this would replace the use of humans in other critical aspects of fulfillment center operations.
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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