More than a decade ago, I attended a Combot event in San Mateo with my son, and yes, there were remote-controlled robots battling each other. The object of such a fighting robot competition is that the first one to lose is the one that can no longer move. Half of the spectators were children and it was great fun for everyone. It was striking that, contrary to the expectations set by popular culture, the robots here were not Transformers, standing on two legs and punching each other with two fists, but mostly looked as if they were lowered Roomba vacuum cleaner robots pimped out with circular saws, hammers and axes.
In fact, the organizers wanted two-legged robots, and they were even allowed to be heavier than the killer roombas. However, not a single representative had two legs, as this was simply not technically manageable.
Twelve years later, things have changed. Several dozen robotics companies are working on and presenting their two-legged and two-handed robots, which are sometimes more, sometimes less adept at walking or even running.
The San Jose based start-up Figure.AI is at the forefront of development. Figure CEO Brett Adcock presented a new end-to-end neural network that focuses on robot walking thanks to reinforcement learning and simulation. In the following video, Figure shows how the robots walk before and after. The movement of the robots with the new model looks natural to us humans.
Why do companies like Figure actually build humanoid robots? Quite simply: the world around us was designed and aligned by us humans for humans. Every appliance, every tool, every house was designed for the human body. An iron or a hammer was designed for a human hand, a door handle for a human hand, a staircase for human legs and feet. If we now want to use robots, they should resemble us in this respect, without us having to go to great lengths to develop robot-compatible tools, devices and buildings.
But if they are going to be among us humans, they also have to be safe and not hurt us. And here come a number of requirements for the robots, depending on whether they are used in a factory or in a household. The researcher responsible for robot safety at Figure, Rob Gruendel, outlined these in a blog post. While in a factory only trained adults work in a room that is not open to the public, in the home children and untrained people also move around a robot.
In addition to the movements of the robot, which must be able to recognize and safely move people during its activities, it must also not be easy to unbalance and fall on people. Requirements for the battery in the robot or joints where a small child’s finger can be pinched must also be taken into account. And because such robots equipped with generative AI communicate with us, the much-discussed safety of AI must not be forgotten. Instructions and responses given by a humanoid robot should be correct and must not harm humans.