humanoids – the next generation

March 8th, 2009 | 7 comments

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This blog-post is the third in a series of 4 postings about 4 mega-trends that each can take two paths. Heaven or hell. Everything depends on ourselves and our own decisions. The 5th post will be a summing up and conclusions.

: Asimo via Wikipedia

I suppose that most of you have heard about the amazing Asimo from Honda. Partner from Toyota is another one and there are many more. Asia is far ahead of Europe and the U.S. when it comes to humanoids. Of course a robot must not resemble a human being. It can be adapted to different tasks with different size and design but here we will talk about humanoids. One interesting fact is that it is the automotive industry in Japan, China and South Korea that invests most resources in humanoids. How come?

What does automotive have to do with humanoids?

There are projections that indicate that the sales volume of humanoids will exceed the sales volume of passenger cars in less than 10 years. These volumes require production, distribution, after market with support. In order to design and develop these things, considerable knowledge is needed. In all produce and sell humanoids and other advanced robots is at a level that is comparable to cars. How many industries, of today, have the required capacity? This is what Asian automotive realised many years ago. One have to start now in order to get market shares in this emerging segment. Even the price might be the same as a small car.

Why would people spend so much money on a humanoid?

Right now they can not do much, but Asimo is working on a number of receptions with simple tasks. Eg to show the guests to the right place and offering coffee. They remember the guest’s name and face and can make simple greetings. At first, they may well just be for entertainment and very simple tasks at home. Eventually, he (yes I will say he!) can act as a personal valet to cook and clean up after us. He can serve as a popular babysitter. He can carry your bags. He will remember everything that you need to know, navigate and even be our interface to Internet.

: “Partner” from Toyota

Another path of development, opposite from entertainment, is humanoids for embarking dangerous environments, heavy lifts, hospital care tasks and so on. Pretty nice prospects or what?

Is everything just fine?

There is one obvious catch. What happens when Asimo can do work as good as we people? Many jobs are not more complicated than that it will be possible quite soon if not right now. Outsourcing may not be as interesting when we reach that point but mass unemployment can wait around the corner. We will in the same time get closer and closer to the singularity point (see Singularity – are we doomed?). We do not need to reach that point before they will be able to take over all kinds of jobs including office jobs and eventually leadership job. The whole picture is of course a little more complicated than this. I will come back to that later in the post about “summing-up and conclusions”. As you can see in the link above, the singularity point will by itself raise some other questions.

Heaven or hell?

Some links of interest:

Robot Park in South Korea an example of Asian spirit within this field
Asimo from Honda
Partner from Toyota
Singularity – are we doomed? My previous post about heaven or hell
“futuramb unfiltered” have a link to h+ Magazine about future scenarios

Robots, Brain and Muscles Two links about future possibilities and threats. Interpret brain signals and grow [...]...
singularity – are we doomed? Singularity is the point when computers are smarter than humans and that will happen! What will this mean in practical [...]...
Robotics – a realistic future view We have something about robots in the western world. Robots are dangerous. We can accept that they will do the boring and maybe difficult jobs that humans can't do or...
Will robots really take over? We know that one day robots (or computers actually) will be smarter than us - The point of singularity. In my previous post, "5 Technology disasters", I talked about disasters...
Machine Translation, an experiment – a poll Ok folks! I will show you 4 blog-posts and they are written in two ways: I wrote the story in Swedish. After that I had it translated in Google Translate....

monitoring, legislative changes and control « CaroKann’s Periscope

March 12th, 2009 at 00:37

[...] To get a broader picture, please read my 3 previous blog-posts: “singularity – are we doomed?”, “nanotechnology” and “humanoids – the next generation” [...]

carokann

March 13th, 2009 at 00:58

I comment myself here: surfed in to this interesting article about humanoids:

http://thomblake.com/2009/03/12/robot-uprising/

The result from my poll « CaroKann’s Periscope

March 24th, 2009 at 23:03

[...] only article where I used Machine Translation is humanoids – the next generation. I don’t know if this means that I write better or worse than the Machine Translator does! It [...]

Robots, Brain and Muscles « CaroKann’s Periscope

April 1st, 2009 at 22:15

[...] my perspective, robotics and humanoids is an area that is taking off the years to come. See also humanoids – the next generation. Honda managed to interpret a mans brain pattern when he thought about lifting his right hand. [...]

April 2nd, 2009 at 10:26

[...] The first one is about robotics controlled by brain. From my perspective, robotics and humanoids is an area that is taking off the years to come. See also humanoids – the next generation. [...]

nature biotechnology journal

March 4th, 2010 at 01:20

coming soon..very soon

Jasmine Ward

August 29th, 2010 at 19:30

me and my brothers do have lots of passion about automotive stuffs’~”

CaroKann’s Periscope

humanoids – the next generation

What does automotive have to do with humanoids?

Why would people spend so much money on a humanoid?

Is everything just fine?

7 comments to humanoids – the next generation

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