Hacker News Reader

Comment by marginalia_nu | Hacker News Reader

What would even be the point of mass producing humanoid robots? It's not a particularly practical shape for a robot. We have the shape we do because it's a local minimum that accommodates our biological needs (eating, digestion, blood oxygenation and purification, reproduction), all needs that a robot does not have.

A humanoid robot is "horseless carriage" mentality if I ever saw one.

View on HN

The world is full of places and devices that are specifically designed for the human form. A humanoid robot can seamlessly use all of that, without changing any of them. That massive economic incentive is why humanoid robots are being pursued, not because researchers lack imagination.

Wouldn't it be an even bigger economic incentive to not have to go through this inefficient humanoid interface? Anyway, even with the constraint of being able to operate human interfaces, a robot can look many different ways. Like most of the torso just doesn't make sense for a robot.

There's also a ton of obvious improvements. 360 degree vision. Put a camera in each hand too while we're at it. CCD sensors and basic lenses costs next to nothing and it's very easy to replace.

I suspect that if/when we get to a world where it makes economic sense to manufacture billions of robots, it’ll be easier and cheaper to modify the infrastructure.

It might just be cheaper to change the not-robot things to fit a robot shape rather than create humanoid robots.

For example, spending ungodly amounts of money to develop a humanoid to flip burgers feels overkill. Probably cheaper to just… replace the flattop grill with an automatic cooker. Which do exist, right now, and have for decades.

Worse is better.

A humanoid robot doing burger flipping is a commodity. You can estimate the return per hour.

A specialised robot is a design and maintenance headache. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49475993

A lot of train an automotive stuff can be traced to the size of a horse drawn carriage, same with mny other areas - the legacy goes way back in most places and has immense power.

Stairs, doors, tables, chairs are all designed for humanoids; the will be large similaritys with the optimum form just as horseless carriages still have four wheels.

Why would the robots be walking around so much? Can't you just have one robot on one floor and another robot on another floor and let them share information between them? Humans need to go places to see and hear things, and to communicate with each other. Robots don't have any such limitation.

For moving objects between locations there are much better solutions than building a humanoid robot and having it carry the thing. And it's not like they'd need to go home after their shift.

Yes, single purpose robots like washing machines and rombas are much better value and hence much more common. But if I want a sandwich in bed, that is either way more pre planning then I actually did; dozens of simple machines; or something much closer to humanoid.

We're never going to get to the point where everyone has a robot manservant making them breakfast in bed. That may well be a product, but you don't need billions of those, but thousands.

The pitch for the billions of humanoid robots is replacing workers, and in that context, the humanoid shape doesn't add much, and in such an economy, the replaced workers aren't going to be splurging on domestic robots.

The point would be for them to more easily replace humans without having to rebuild all of our infrastructure around non-humanoid ergonomics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com