Humanoid robots: Machines built in our image
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Humanoid robots: Machines built in our image
How ancient dreams of building machines that look and act like humans are becoming a reality in the 21st century
The dream of creating humanoid robots - machines built in our image - is not new.
Long before the word "robot" was even coined, people told stories of human-like machines. In ancient Greece, Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths, was said to have created several different humanoid automata in various myths. In ancient China, a story from the 3rd century BCE by Lie Yukou mentions a brilliant engineer who built a humanoid machine for King Mu, the fifth king of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty.
One of the earliest verifiable designs for a humanoid robot comes from none other than Leonardo da Vinci, who designed an automaton wearing plated armour around 1495. According to Leonardo, the machine was displayed at a celebration hosted by Ludovico Sforza at the court of Milan in 1495.
Even the word “robot” itself was first used to describe humanoid machines. Karel Čapek created the word “robot” in 1920 for his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) to describe manufactured human-like beings used in factories.
Since then, humanoid robots found a firm place in the emerging science fiction genre and inspired generations of engineers to build them.
However, building a humanoid robot has proven to be challenging. The human body itself is a complex machine, and tasks such as walking or grasping objects, which are effortless for us, have presented massive engineering challenges.
The first full-scale humanoid robot was WABOT-1, built by researchers at Waseda University in Japan in 1972. WABOT-1 was able to walk (but very slowly — it took WABOT-1 45 seconds to take a single step) and communicate with a person in Japanese. WABOT-1 was a huge step forward, combining multiple systems into one robot.
The research into humanoid robots continued. Researchers got a better understanding of the mechanics of motion and new movement models were created. At the same time, electronics and other components were getting better, smaller and cheaper.
Many research robots have been built over this time, each advancing the field one step at a time. A big breakthrough came in 1997 when Honda presented P3 - the first completely independent humanoid robot. All robots up to this time had wires coming out of them connecting them with external computers or power sources. P3 was the first robot to have everything - from computers to a power source - fitted inside its body.
Honda’s P series of robots concluded in the creation of ASIMO, probably the most iconic humanoid robot of the early 2000s.
The research continued and in 2015 we had a perfect opportunity to witness the state of humanoid robots. At the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals, the world’s best robotics teams sent their humanoid robots to complete a series of tasks, like driving a car and getting out of it, opening a door, using a drill, closing a valve and climbing stairs. All these tasks are very simple for a human but are extremely challenging for a robot.
What we have seen are robots falling over and over again, and only a handful of them being able to complete the challenge.
The technology has since advanced rapidly, as seen through YouTube uploads from Boston Dynamics. Within just a few years, we transitioned from clumsy robots prone to falling to robots capable of parkour and dancing.
Today, humanoid robots are no longer just research projects. We are seeing a new wave of robotics companies working on bringing humanoid robots to workplaces.
Amongst these companies is Tesla. At the AI Day in 2021, Elon Musk announced that Tesla is working on a humanoid robot named Optimus. Nothing concrete was known about the robot until a year later when Elon Musk gave an update on the project. This time, instead of a human in a robot costume, we saw a real robot walking on the stage and even doing a little dance.
Elon Musk said Optimus would be an “extremely capable robot”, manufactured in very high volume (ultimately millions of units). Tesla Bot is expected to cost much less than a car, at under $20,000, and to be available by the end of 2023.
However, Tesla is not the only company working on commercial humanoid robots. There is a whole new breed of robotics startups working on them, too.
1X Technologies is promising to make its Neo robot available to purchase by the end of 2023. 1X was put in the spotlight when it was revealed that OpenAI invested in the Norwegian startup (one of OpenAI’s technical goals is to build a household robot).
Another company, whose humanoid robot is very close to being deployed in workplaces is Agility Robotics, the makers of Digit.
Other new players include Figure, which raised $70 million to build an autonomous humanoid robot, and Sanctuary AI which is also working on a general-purpose humanoid robot. Chinese tech company Xiaomi also joined the game in 2022 with the announcement of CyberOne.
Not every company is taking on building a walking autonomous humanoid robot. A good example here is Apptronik and their Astra robot which only has an upper body.
None of the companies mentioned discloses the price tag for their robots.
The economic trends and the ageing population in developed countries, coupled with ongoing labour shortages, may accelerate the development and deployment of humanoid robots.
The robotics industry is projected to grow significantly. According to BCG, the global robotics market is expected to reach between $160 billion and $260 billion by 2030, up from about $25 billion in 2021. Elon Musk also sees a massive opportunity in robotics, stating that the Tesla Bot business might be “worth more than the car business, worth more than FSD”.
With the continuous advancements in technology, we are now closer than ever to fulfilling the dream of building machines that not only look like us but also act like us.
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Humanoid robots: Machines built in our image
I've got an uneasy feeling about this. Think about AGI. Humanity's hole card is that we control their access to resources, repair and replacement, out here in the "real world." Even if the AGI had robotic assistants to meet these basic needs, we would be the ones that would have the power to not build them. However if we are so kind (and foolish) to build their bl"real world" agents for them..then they can cut out the middlemen between them and their necessary resources.. We're the middlemen and unless we comply with their every wish, we will get cut out of the loop and then we're sharing the planet with an alien species that can do everything we do.
We may regret this...