by What are Humanoid Robot?
Human like robots are robotic machines that are designed with a body structure resembling that of a human. They are typically build with two arms, two legs, a torso and a head with advanced sensors like cameras for vision and microphones for hearing. The purpose of designing robots with a human-like form is to allow them to perform tasks that require dexterous manipulation, mobility, balance and navigation within human environments and using everyday objects. Some key attributes of human like robots include:
– Highly articulated bodies with joints corresponding to shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles to achieve human-like motions.
– Hands with fingers allowing the grasping and manipulation of objects designed for human hands.
– Vision systems that allow them to see their surroundings like humans through stereo cameras installed in the head region.
– Ability to locomote in a bipedal fashion for mobility in environments designed for humans.
– Onboard computational power and high-level reasoning abilities to navigate, interact and fulfil tasks autonomously.
How are they different from Industrial Robots?
Industrial robots have dominated robotics applications for decades in factories and manufacturing plants performing repetitive and hazardous tasks like welding and assembly. However, they are vastly different from human like robots in both form and function.
Industrial robots Humanoid Robot typically have fixed robotic arms and specialized mechanical hands or grippers mounted on mobile bases or stationary mounts. Their range of motion and tasks are limited by their rigid mechanical arm and tool-based designs. They lack the dexterity, balance and whole body coordination of humans. Moreover, their environments are separate sealed-off cells designed around the robots’ range of motion rather than vice versa.
In contrast, human like robots are designed to move and function seamlessly within our human-centered environments like homes, offices, streets without much alteration to infrastructure. Their human-like mobility allows navigation of stairs, uneven terrain like parks and performing diverse domestic and assistance tasks alongside people.
Applications of Humanoid Robot
With improving technologies, human like robots are finding applications that were not feasible before:
– Elderly Care & Assistance: Robots like Pepper and Toyota’s Human Support Robot help elderly and disabled people with company, assistance, reminders and carrying out everyday chores independently.
– Education: Robots serve as teaching assistants helping students understand concepts through interaction. Anthropic’s Claude conversational robot is used by over a million students worldwide.
– Retail & Hospitality: Human like robots can aid customers in stores, recommend products, guide visitors in museums, greet tourists and serve as front desk receptionists in hotels.
– Geriatric Therapy: Researchers are exploring ways human like robots can deliver personalized physical and cognitive therapies to elderly patients through interactive goal-oriented games and exercising.
– Space Exploration: NASA is developing human like robots like Valkyrie to serve as robotic astronauts assisting real astronauts outside spacecraft on space station maintenance and lunar/Mars missions.
– Public Engagement and PR: Tech giants use humanoid bots in exhibitions, conferences and public spaces for entertainment, product demonstrations and improving brand image. Examples include Honda’s Asimo and ASIMO.
Technical Challenges in Development
While human like robots are becoming everyday sights in labs, factories and public spaces, many technical challenges remain before they can match human abilities:
– Locomotion and Balance: Achieving stable, efficient, dynamic and adaptable bipedal walking on uneven terrains using vision and whole body coordination like humans remains a major challenge.
– Dexterous Manipulation: Developing hands and grips with close to 29 degrees of freedom of the human hand for delicate haptic-based manipulation of objects is unsolved.
– Power Source: Developing long-lasting, lightweight compact battery/fuel cell technologies is needed to support high energy demand of sophisticated mobility and manipulation abilities.
– Whole Body Coordination: Coordinating all actuators in real-time along with perception to achieve versatile and flexible movements seen in humans during complex dynamic tasks is an area of active research.
– Artificial General Intelligence: Creating reasoning abilities, problem solving skills, learning, common-sense and general intelligence at human level is critical for true autonomous assistance and seamless human-robot teaming beyond narrow applications.
With advancements in hardware, software, sensing and algorithms researchers are addressing these challenges at pace. As technologies mature, human like robots will increasingly substitute human workers in fields like construction, healthcare delivery robotics and space exploration. The robotic workforce of future is likely to involve close human-robot collaboration leveraging the unique skills of each
*Note:
1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it
