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Comment by jezzamon | Hacker News Reader

If you asked someone 300 years ago what an automated dishwashing machine would've looked like, it would be a lot more like a person than the wet cupboard we have now. I'm assuming many tasks will be like that -- it's more of a lack of imagination for why we say we need a humanoid robot to solve that task. I'm assuming it'll be the minority of tasks where it make it makes sense for that

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A robot that isn't stationary, in a home or in a factory, wants legs. Wheels are fine for cars but not great for stepping over things (like on cluttered floors) and stairs. So legs, assuming we've got the compute and algorithms to get them to work well, only make sense. The rest allows for application of creativity. As a human, have a head, my brain is in it, as are my eyes. Humanoid robot doesn't need a head, and can have cameras in its chest and on its back, and then also have its brain in the chest. Depending on what's useful, it doesn't need to be limited to two arms. It could have one centrally mounted in its chest, with two cheaper ones on both sides. Or four, two on each side. I've wished for three hands before. The problem though is that they look weird. Any non-traditional design is going to fall into the uncanny valley, so that no matter how much better your non-traditionally armed robot is technically, it's just not gonna sell to the mass market. We only have to look at weird cars/vehicles which have a history of being boondoggles. So it's not a failure of imagination, and more a matter of practicality.

This needs to be some sort of maxim: “The most useful robots are the ones that don’t look like (or try to be) humanoids.”

For some reason (judging by Fritz Lang, Gundam, etc.) humanity has some deep desire or curiosity for robots to look like humans. I wonder if cats want robot cats?

> humanity has some deep desire or curiosity for robots to look like humans.

I don't think you can draw that conclusion. Most people find humanoid robots creepy. I think we have a desire for "Universal Robotics". As awesome as my dishwasher is, it's disappointing that it's nearly useless for any other task. Yeah, it washes my dishes, but it doesn't was my clothes, or put away the dishes. Our desire for a humanoid robot, I think, largely grows out of our desire for having a single machine capable of doing anything.

The vast majority of “universal robots” are portrayed as humanoids in science fiction. Perhaps part of the reason is that true “universality” includes socializing, companionship, human emotions, and of course love.

Or, alternatively, general-purpose robots tend to be human-shaped because the world as it already is has already been fully designed for humans. Single doors are tall because that's the size of a human. Tools are designed to be held in something like a hand, sometimes two of them. Stairs are designed to be walked on, and basically any other traversal method just falls apart.

Of course, there is also the thing where authors and artists tend to draw anything with human intelligence as humans, from robots to aliens. Maybe it's the social reason you mention, or they just unconsciously have assumed humans to be the greatest design to ever exist. But even despite this, in a human world, I expect the first true general-purpose robots to be "standing" upright, with one or several arm-like limbs.

If you want to make a more general-purpose robot, then approximating a human form is rational, because our spaces and systems are designed for human interaction. At the moment, though, no-one has really succeeded at that, and all the successful robots are much more specialised.

This.

One robot that rules them all is preferable from many perspectives, but we're simply not there yet.

By that definition we have massive numbers of those robots already. But that brings up the Sortie's paradox of when does a machine become a robot.

If you can create a human you become god in a way.

Also it would just be compatible with our current world.

You _can_ create a human. Or at least participate in its creation.

A non-humanoid robot is called a *machine".

We have lots of those.

Right but that's very task specific, and what many people want is a single robot which can do many different tasks, and do so without modifying the existing environment. I would love a robot which could cook and clean and do laundry (including folding) but I still need to live in the same space it would use. The most obvious way to do that is a humanoid robot, which is why nanny companies are working on it, and here he's arguing that's not going to work.

The other obvious way to do it is to centralize it, have a lift in your house that brings up meals and clean laundry to order, where you can put your dirty dishes in when you're done, and a central space where staff and robots take care of things.

I'm actually surprised or interested that this isn't more of a thing, it doesn't take any high tech either. I suppose people like having their own stuff, or people can't be trusted, or it's prohibitively expensive to outsource food / laundry (even if especially in the US ordering food or eating out is very common).

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