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Comment by arnaudsm | Hacker News Reader

Why would you need bipedism for a flying object ? Wouldn't a quadripod + quadcopter setup would be much more stable and cheaper ?

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It's being advertised as being used for generic disaster recovery, where it's beneficial to be human-shaped (human infrastructure is designed for humans, so its easier to interface with it if the robot is human-shaped too), so they just strapped some jets on it to take it to the disaster zone itself

That's just something robot manufacturers say to justify building their expensive toys, I promise you it'll never be used for that purpose.

See the XKCD someone has already posted below.

Yeah I know, but that's what they're advertising it as

>It's being advertised as being used for generic disaster recovery, where it's beneficial to be human-shaped (human infrastructure is designed for humans, so its easier to interface with it if the robot is human-shaped too)

Ummmm, disaster recovery is hard precisely because the infrastructure (e.g. a collapsed building) ceased to be suitable for humans.

The way in which it isn't suitable for humans depends on the disaster though. If somewhere is flooded or on fire, a humanoid robot will probably be able to navigate it better than a quadrupedal one. If the building is collapsed, sure

That's not the point of this robot.

I suppose the original iCub research robot is running out of grants it can milk, so they strapped some jet engines to it.

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