Humanoid Robot Hype Masks Limited Autonomy and Deployment

Key Quotes

"No, I mean, the short answer there is definitely not, not all the time. A lot of these videos that these companies are putting out, they are selectively edited or they're selectively presented, and the great phrase that I heard used by, um, Nvidia's director of robotics was, um, the blind gymnast phenomenon. It refers to the fact that you can see a robot backflipping, you know, perfectly doing parkour, doing all these fantastic moves, but in a sense, it doesn't know what it's doing. It can't adapt to the environment it's in. It's like a blind gymnast."

James Vincent explains that the impressive feats shown in many humanoid robot videos are often misleading. He uses the "blind gymnast phenomenon" to illustrate that while robots can perform complex actions, they may lack true environmental awareness or adaptability, and the footage is frequently edited to showcase only the best moments.

"I think the reason we're seeing all this progress now is there's a lot of hope being transferred from the world of AI. They're calling it the ChatGPT moment. The basic hope is that the same trajectory that ChatGPT took, where you've got this huge step up in quality and progress from large language models, will apply to robotics now."

James Vincent identifies the current surge in humanoid robot development as being fueled by optimism from the advancements in Artificial Intelligence, specifically large language models like ChatGPT. The hope is that similar breakthroughs in data processing and computing power will translate into significant progress for robotics.

"The one that robotics companies themselves cite most often is the world as we know it, the environment as we know it is built for the human form factor, as it were. You know, we have handles, we have levers, we have stairs. These are built for hands, they're built for feet. So rather than adopting the environment to the robot, we adopt the robot to the environment. So let's make them human."

James Vincent explains a primary rationale for developing humanoid robots: the existing world is designed for human anatomy and capabilities. He argues that it is more practical to create robots that can navigate and interact with this human-centric environment rather than re-engineering the environment for robots.

"What about robots in factories? That's a little bit more of a reasonable proposition. So the thing with robots in homes is not only is the form of work much more varied in terms of what the robots are being expected to do, but there's a lot of issues to do with privacy and safety. You know, these robots are not light. You know, if one of them topples over, if one of them has a little bit of an unforeseen technical error and it falls and say squashes a pet or something like this, then there's going to be all sorts of issues."

James Vincent suggests that factories are a more practical initial deployment environment for humanoid robots compared to homes. He points out that the tasks in factories are often more constrained, and issues related to privacy and safety, which are significant concerns for robots operating in domestic settings, are less problematic in industrial environments.

"I think in a lot of these reports there's an illusion between different types of robots and different types of with the New York Times story about Amazon, a lot of the robots, the vast vast vast majority of those robots are going to be what are called AMR, autonomous mobile robots. These are the ones that look like little coffee tables on wheels and they pick up shelves and they move them around. These are not humanoids, they are nothing near it."

James Vincent clarifies a common misconception regarding the scale of robot deployment, particularly in relation to reports about companies like Amazon. He distinguishes between humanoid robots and Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs), which are more prevalent and less complex, emphasizing that the latter are not comparable to the advanced humanoid robots discussed.