There’s functionally no engineering reason to put a robot on two legs. Every other form factor is cheaper, more stable, more efficient, and easier to maintain.
There is, however, a very good marketing reason: everyone’s watched Terminator, fear goes viral, and anxiety drives attention.
A warehouse robot is infrastructure.
A humanoid robot is an engagement strategy…
@Daojoan oh oh oh, for once I have written something somewhat relevant on the topic
https://caffeineandlasers.com/blogs/WhyhumansarehumanoidshapedandwhySciFiMechsshouldnotbe.html
Biomimicry is good, but only makes sense if you are actually working in the same constraints as the biology you are mimicking
It is our desire to play God...
Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."
Aaakshully
Two legs makes sense.
1. Minimum suspension mats (vs tripod or quad+)
2. Nature doesn't do wheels.
3. There are other ground propulsion methods (wigglies etc) but not fast.
4. Once you got the balance software going, legs are super fast.
5. You could have alternatives, but they are medium specific (arboreal, hydrous), legs are universal.
6. Flight has specific downsides mass/energy also medium specific
Just about the only half decent alternative is snake.
But legs > snake
The Animal Evolution Roguelite. Hunt, Flee, Scavenge and Thrive in a living ecosystem. Choose from 125+ Evolutions and Specialisations for unique creature combinations in every run. Adapt to survive the natural curve in order to beat carcinisation... or get Darwin'd trying!
I bet they can by now, but the last time I checked with people who would know, it wasn't yet possible to build a robot that could catch anything but a perfectly thrown ball. Without requiring mobility, can a robotic arm catch a ball traveling at, say, 20km/hr through a 1m x 1m window?
@Daojoan It’s more than engagement IMO. It’s an attempt to directly devalue human worth.
https://humancode.us/2024/10/11/robots-should-not-look-like-people
@Daojoan
There is an interesting mixture of videos with ridiculously failing androids...
and astonishing abilities of others.
In one sort they look harmless and acceptable clumsy, even adorable mainly because of their human shape.
In another way they look very ..useful.
None of this should distract from their frighteningly rapid development.
None of this should distract from the question of who could benefit from their future capabilities and mass production.
There is another reason that should be obvious but isn’t, because for some reason we are never taught this when we are kids.
Of all large creatures, the human has the tightest turn radius.
(All they did was teach us how we were physically inferior blah blah blah. Meanwhile we had easily the tightest turn radius of all creatures. Even a chimp cannot turn as tightly. It is something very worth replicating in machinery.
A dog has to walk in a circle.)
I always cringe at illustrations of “office AI assistants”. Humanoid robots who look at a big monitor and does input using a keyboard and mouse. JUST USE THE USB-C CONNECTOR ALREADY!!!
Of course, they are almost always white and the female bots have nice boobs. So infantilising.
Sarah Connor’s biggest mistake was failing to develop military grade glue guns. The first robot uprising would have been too sticky to do much damage 😁
Mammals account for 0.06% of species on this planet. Being the only biped among such a trivially small group is hardly noteworthy.
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