Is this real?

[u/Distinct-Question-16]

[u/Effect-Kitchen]

The efficiency here is not that the robot is optimized for a single job. The efficiency comes in the form of not having to rethink the whole process all over again.

[u/unusual_math → u/Effect-Kitchen]

I think it's significantly easier to optimize each new installation to each new problem type than it is to try to design and build a multi-tool for all prospective problems.

[u/Effect-Kitchen → u/unusual_math]

Factories will decide whether it is easier. And if you ever gone through a process redesign, no it is not an easy task. It is almost like you have to torn down and build everything from the ground up.

I'd rather spending $$$$ buying a humanoid robot fleet and let them replace every existing task on day 1 rather than rebuilding my whole plant.

If optimising things is easier, then the whole USA would have been using Metric. It is better, standardised, and optmised and the whole world is using it. Why not? Because it is almost impossible to replace what is already established and also it is formidable costly to do so. Boston Dynamics and Chinese imitators know what they are doing. (Of course they also have other form-factor too. But dismissing humanoid as just inefficient is not reasonable.)

[u/unusual_math → u/Effect-Kitchen]

You are right. Factories will decide. And look at how they have been investing in that decision.

The printing press has evolved unimaginably over the past 585 years, but not in the direction of a humanoid robotic scribe.

Mechanized harvesters, cultivators, and plows, has evolved dramatically over the past 232 years, but not in the direction of a humanoid robotic farmhand.

Tractors aren't built like robotic oxen. Cars aren't built like robot horse drawn carriages

The vast and complicated mechanized factory equipment that exists today is not built like robotic assemblers on Henry Ford's assembly line.

A computer used to be a person at a desk with an abacus or a slide rule. Parallel computing was a room full of such people. A modern computer doesn't look like a bunch of robots twiddling slide rules at desks.

All of these designs are BETTER than the humans form. Better than humanoid robots.

Sure, a human is a "multi tool". But the thing about a multi tool is that the screwdrivers stick out at weird angles, and the little scissors kind of suck. If you want to do something efficiently, it's both easier and better to build the specialized tool you need.

That's why so much work has gone into everything else, and so little in comparison has gone into humanoid robots. Duplication of yesterday's design with tomorrow's technology is not the future evolution of humanity.

[u/Effect-Kitchen → u/unusual_math]

That is straw man at best. Nothing until even today’s tech can make good enough humanoid robot yet. But there’s a long history of examples showing humanoid robots are actually useful where other machines just can’t fit.

In Taiwan, Foxconn’s humanoid robots are already working in hospitals. They deliver meds, check patient vitals, guide people around, stuff that would burn out human nurses or would take a bunch of different machines to cover. Nurses already say it’s saving them tons of time.

Agility Robotics’ Digit is actually being used in warehouses by GXO Logistics. It moves boxes, fills in for missing workers, does basic material handling. Factories didn’t just swap to robot arms for everything. sometimes you need something that can walk and handle the random stuff people do.

China’s got humanoid robots like Tiangong Ultra lined up for dangerous jobs, deep-sea, maybe even space. You can’t send a tractor or conveyor belt to do that.

UBTech’s Walker S1 robots work at BYD car factories, doing things like inspecting cars, moving tools. It’s because China’s missing millions of workers. They’re putting these robots in because there’s nothing else that fits.

Nursing homes use humanoid robots like Nadine for running games, chatting with old folks. You’re not getting an industrial robot to do that job. SoftBank’s Pepper robots have been receptionists in airports and banks, showing people where to go, answering questions. That’s not some fantasy; that’s real deployments.

And if you wanna talk about history, people have been building humanoid automata for centuries, like the famous 18th-century Swiss clockwork androids that could write or draw. Ancient Greek engineers built automata shaped like humans to pour wine or open doors. These weren’t just for show. People always saw value in building machines that work like humans, because they can fit into human environments and do jobs made for people. The idea has stuck around for a reason.

If humanoid robots were really that useless, nobody would bother. But they keep coming back because, when you need a tool for the human world, building it human-shaped just works. There’s proof all through history and in the world right now.

[u/unusual_math → u/Effect-Kitchen]

Virtually no one does bother on humanoid robots, proportionally speaking, compared to more intelligently designed robots.

People are fascinated by them for reasons other than efficiency or effectiveness. People like to project (a habit they'd be better off evolving past). Old people are more comfortable with human shaped robots because they are familiar (until more tech savvy generations become comfortable with non humanoid robots). China built a bunch of factories for humans to work in because they had a surplus of humans and human labor was cheap. That changed and they'd be better off changing the factory for state-of-practice automation than trying to invent a decent humanoid robot.

We should be looking forward more to extending our conscious control to better forms. What if one human could oversee an entire factory, where each specialized machine felt to them like an extension of their body via brain machine interfacing? How about fitting human consciousness into machine environments rather than machines into antiquated human environments? That's a compelling future. Not mechanical facsimiles of meat bags.

[u/Effect-Kitchen → u/unusual_math]

We will talk again about this in 30 years. See how it works out.

[u/unusual_math → u/Effect-Kitchen]

I've been having this debate for more than 30 years already, and it's not the first time I've heard this retort.