When I think of many of the robots that appear in Hollywood films and occasionally pop up in segments on news magazines I can't help but notice how many of them look like people. There seems to be some expectation that when we all have personal helper droids they'll look more like us than R2-D2, but I have to wonder if our body plans provide a good design for robots that might eventually be made to do a number of tasks. (Our upright bipedalism, for example, means that every time we take a step we have to prevent ourselves from falling over. Such a mode of locomotion is difficult to replicate, especially without all the muscles that help make it work!)
Given the success of arthropods I have to wonder if beetles would not provide a better design, or forget taking cues from natural objects we admire and try to make something that works rather than something that is familiar. Take a look at this short piece on a robot currently in development. Although it isn't the spitting image of Homo sapiens it still seems to be based upon our general body plan;
I'll be seeing Wall-E myself tonight and am definitely looking forward to it, but I do find it interesting that even as we seek to create artificial beings our ideas about what they should look like appear to be very narrow. Why is this so?
- Log in to post comments
More like this
even as we seek to create artificial beings our ideas about what they should look like appear to be very narrow. Why is this so?
I don't believe it is so, except in movies. In the past few months I've watched videos of robots-- real robots, commercial products or seeking capital or serious research -- based on cockroaches, snakes, dolphins, and quadrupeds; not to mention the ubiquitous wheeled robots. The best-selling robot is probably based on a vacuum cleaner, or perhaps a toy dog. Hollywood robots are no closer to reality than is anything else in Hollywood.
On the other hand, if you're wondering why Hollywood prefers anthropomorphic robots, I don't think there's any mystery in that either. We are anthropos, and we are interested in anthropomorphic objects.
A couple of my friends have had Alzheimer's disease.
A carebot could really help people remain independent longer through the early stages, if it were friendly and nonthreatening enough. I'm trying to picture them dealing with anything that looked like a giant mechanical arthropod. It had better be sturdy.
Am I right that this "carebot" is built on a scaled-down version of a Segway? That's cool.
Ian; Good points. Perhaps it is a relic of my own television viewing pratices (which is basically nil these days) but most of the robots I've seen being designed for home use have been human like. (There is a particular SONY model that comes to mind that I saw a while ago as one example, but the name escapes me.)
I know robots in general are diverse in form and function, but there does seem to be at least some minor desire among those to create robots that would exist in people's homes to have them be human like (or, in some cases, dog-like). As I said my perception here may be off given that I do not have my eye on the trends in home robotics (and I wrote what I did above expecting to be proven wrong), and while the reasons for creating anthropomorphic robots might not be mysterious I still find it interesting.
Robomule: http://youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww
Swimming/walking robot: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9Vm-gQ9_H9I
Robot fish: http://youtube.com/watch?v=JTiAxFRMDkY
Robot snake: http://youtube.com/watch?v=r9uBC9TP5pw
Climbing robot: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1lkz5hvEDK0
Wheeled bot with cockroach behaviours: http://youtube.com/watch?v=eLTd79Ikd78
Animal-inspired bots: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Tq8Yw19bn7Q
Modular robot: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4oSavAHf0dg
And many more.
In The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov laid out a rationale for robots being human-shaped: all our other tools are designed to be used by things of our shape and size. A two-meter arthropod would have trouble chauffeuring you in your car.
Some SF, such as the TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, features a mix of robot types. Humaniform androids and gynoids are used where interfacing with cars and teakettles is necessary; other body types, like the vaguely insectoid Tachikoma, occur in other situations.
"Such a mode of locomotion is difficult to replicate" - Asimo respectfully disagrees!
Robots are going to look like people want them to look or they won't sell. I doubt very many people will want them to look like beetles - unless those particular robots will be doing yard work. Then it might make for a best-seller.
The really interesting question is how will people like them to look? Just like humans (for exmaple their favorite TV or rock star), or rather less human and more like a classical "robot human"?
Robots are going to look like people want them to look or they won't sell
Nonsense. The best-selling robot of all time is the Roomba, which looks nothing like people. (If it's not the Roomba, then it's some model of industrial assembly-belt welding robot or something; same point.)
There's probably a perception bias here. You (and Brian) very likely weren't counting Roomba as a robot because it doesn't look like a human. If you define a robot as "Something that looks like a human", and then ask "Why do all robots look like humans?", it's kind of a pointless question.
"Such a mode of locomotion is difficult to replicate" - Asimo respectfully disagrees!
Actually, Asimo is perfect proof. After years of intense research and millions of dollars, Asimo remains a one-of-a-kind showcase that actually doesn't work very well at all.
In The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov laid out a rationale for robots being human-shaped
Yet the real reason Asimov's robots were human shaped is that it made the stories more fun; and the rationale is just that, an excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway.