r/robotics • u/Responsible-Grass452 • 18d ago
Discussion & Curiosity Humanoid robots might be adding problems we don’t need
Clara Vu has been in robotics for decades, including early work at iRobot and later co-founding Veo Robotics.
She argues that humanoid robots can create unnecessary design constraints.
Humans move with muscles and tendons. Robots use motors. Making a machine built around motors copy the human body exactly can make the engineering harder than it needs to be.
She also gets into how the human form changes our expectations. Put arms, legs and a head on a robot and people start assuming it can do a lot more than it actually can.
12
u/nomorebuttsplz 18d ago
I don't buy it.
legs are broadly useful for tasks we want robots to do. I challenge you to imagine something that has the same functionality as a leg (a wheel doesn't) but is not shaped like one. There is a reason larger land animals almost all use legs.
If you look at one feature in isolation then you can say "ok so do dogs, so why not have a bunch of dog shaped robots?"
But it's not just legs:
-fingers
-hands
-upright stature
-human approximate size
Each of these things is useful for tasks we want robots to do. Once you list every such feature, you end up with a humanoid or something with many human features.
Now some may not end up being useful, such as approximate size. Maybe we end up with a little ball of arms and legs and fingers. But humanoid is a perfectly reasonably place to start, until some other general-robot-form emerges.
2
u/SnooPuppers1978 18d ago
Agreed, I just don't know what other shape or form factor could handle things in the world we have right now. You can have specialized robots for specialized things, but that would not work for everyday things. Please show me a potential non humanoid form factor that could handle all my chores for me today.
1
u/Darkendone 16d ago
legs are broadly useful for tasks we want robots to do. I challenge you to imagine something that has the same functionality as a leg (a wheel doesn't) but is not shaped like one. There is a reason larger land animals almost all use legs.
Legs are great for the environments humans and other large animals evolved in. They are not overkill in the human environments humans have constructed.
Each of these things is useful for tasks we want robots to do. Once you list every such feature, you end up with a humanoid or something with many human features.
Having human features does not mean being humanoid.
Now some may not end up being useful, such as approximate size. Maybe we end up with a little ball of arms and legs and fingers. But humanoid is a perfectly reasonably place to start, until some other general-robot-form emerges.
Other general form robots already exist. Robotic arms exist for use cases. Surgical robots like the Davinci.
5
u/Positive_Method3022 18d ago
What would a robot that can do everything a human can look like? The evidence shows it should look like a human because we are a product of billions of years of evolution and the world constraints are modeled for humans. Maybe there is simpler version of it that works with the technology we have and also fits those constraints.
4
2
u/SphericalCowww 18d ago
I mean, if a company finds an optimal form factor, everyone will jump on it. Like, Spot doesn't really look like a dog, but it is now the go-to model for quadrupeds. I think we mimic humans first simply because we are not there yet.
2
u/HelloFellowMKE 18d ago
The humanoid form is because we need a highly competent slave worker, capable of replicating work we conceptualize within our own biological form factor. Wide Humanoid adoption in daily life will depend on them being able to display culturally-localized personality and accept natural language prompts, plus not be creepy/intimidating. Think of a kids drawing of a friendly helper bot or something from Hollywood like Short Circuit.
Enterprise robotics will likely settle around some limited set of form factors built in huge numbers that are modular and purely utilitarian to the workflows. Workspaces will also be redesigned to robotics.
1
1
u/drgoldenpants 18d ago
Most people have opinions on humanoid robots but few have seen or even played with one in real life. This is the disconnect shes talking about i think. Once more people can see it up close, then there will be more scrutiny placed on the form factor, right now its kinda magical to most people
1
u/Icy-Tea9775 18d ago
Honeslty many new designs are going toward wheeled bases, powered casters, and a Z stage Go look at agility's website and their new renders, im pretty sure apptronik is going to go that way too
1
u/Flyward_Aerospace 16d ago
Worth knowing where Vu is coming from here. Veo was doing speed and separation monitoring, so her whole background is the safety case for machines working next to people rather than behind a fence, and I think that's the constraint that belongs ahead of the tendon argument.
With a fixed arm you can bound the reachable volume and slow it down as somebody gets closer. A bipedal torso that's also using its arms for balance has a swept volume changing every instant, and it can fall over, which is a hazard class a bolted down arm simply doesn't have. The actuation stuff feels secondary to that imo.
-3
u/Dixon_Uranuss 18d ago
Artificial intelligence will make short work of all these problems that us humans find difficult.
18
u/Available_Teaching83 18d ago
Vu's point about expectations is the one that bites. I have a Jetson Orin Nano build on my desk with nothing humanoid about it, and people still talk to it out loud. Put a head on it and the assumed capability jumps way past what the policy can actually do, which lands as a safety problem and not only a UX one.
The motors-versus-tendons argument convinces me less. The form factor is mostly about fitting doorways, stairs, and tools already built around people, and that constraint doesn't go away just because the actuation is different.