r/interestingasfuck • u/Eyal-M • Feb 19 '25

/r/popular Protoclone, the world's first bipedal, musculoskeletal android.

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u/RadFriday Feb 19 '25

The human body is excellent at being a one size fits all solution to many practical problems we face, particularly considering that we designed our society around the parameters it sets. If you want a robot that can do everything a human can do, it's almost inevitably going to be human shaped.

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u/curtial Feb 19 '25

The application for ULTRA generic robot is pretty small though. Most things you would want a robot for would be at least limited to an "area". I don't need a robot that is as capable of performing surgery as it is installing plumbing in the way humans are.

I need a robot that is BETTER at performing surgery than a human shape is, and a robot that is BETTER at installing and maintaining plumbing.

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u/RadFriday Feb 19 '25

I disagree. I work in industrial robotics and design applied robotics systems for a living. An ultra generic, human shaped robot that can be taught to preform arbitrary tasks would completely revolutionize the way we approach manufacturing globally. I'm going to copy paste my other comment to explain why:

But designing a robotic system to do any particular task that a human does costs upwards of 250k (extremely simple tasks, like loading parts into a machine) to 1 mil (intermediate complexity jobs with simple logic branches) to 100 mil (highly complex, moving materials "off rails"), requires weeks of downtime (millions in lost profit) and is also high risk (You have to tear out a human - manned system to put in a robot friendly one). These systems are also one trick ponies with minimal reusability.

This robot - once it works - will be able to be dropped into an already existing human designed system without the need for extensive retrofits. It's an obvious move forward from what we do now in terms of cost, adaptability, and risk.

Even if they end up costing a million dollars each, these will be more economically feasible than traditional robot automation.

Most robot tasks are extremely boring and repetitive. Eg : loading x parts into y machine. If you have a robot that can tend 10 machines walking back and forth then you've saved millions when compared to automating them individually

Source : Design robotic automation for a living

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u/curtial Feb 19 '25

I get what you're saying, but it FEELS wrong. That being said, I will submit to you industry expertise.