@futurebird
Exactly. These look hopelessly outmatched by basic tasks while those assembly arms in factories look incredibly capable.

@TheGreatLlama

They make me think of the wire "comfort mother" from those old unethical experiments with baby chimps.

*shudder*

@TheGreatLlama @futurebird I'm waiting for the day when, to get them out of the way, you tell the robot man to take the robot dog out for a long walk.

@khleedril @TheGreatLlama

That might be the better case... I'm thinking they want to put them in nursing homes.

And then one day you'll hear about someone who died, but the robots didn't notice and kept piling pills and food on their tray for days.

@TheGreatLlama @futurebird Why is every robot walking as if it's shat its nonexistent pants? Is that some balance engineering hurdle that nobody seems to overcome?

Btw it's tesla so I expect it wil catch fire before doing anything useful, but that walk is really bugging me.

@sahqon @TheGreatLlama

Walking on two legs is incredibly complex and requires many motors and servos, or whatever kind of motion control you choose to give fine-grained enough options. Then there is the responsiveness and programing ...

Systems complex enough to reproduce it well have many moving parts and points of failure... so they aren't durable.

@sahqon @TheGreatLlama

Our legs are a lot more than just stiff sections connected by joints.

We might think of the knee as a hinge, but it can also rotate ... ankles and hip are even more complex and responsive.

@futurebird @TheGreatLlama

"What is this robot for exactly?"

The reason you would want a human shaped machine that does what you order it to do is because it's nominally illegal to enslave humans.

@sahqon @TheGreatLlama

I don't really get the desire to reproduce human walking, but without a flexible ankle and foot it's not gonna happen.

@troy_frizzell @TheGreatLlama

Or if you are someone who hires and pays for people to do a job that you think of as "just standing around" not understanding the skill and full range of work the PEOPLE you employ do to keep your business making money.

So you see no reason why a human-shaped thing couldn't replace all those pesky people who do things like point out dangerous conditions, or respond to unexpected problems...

@troy_frizzell @TheGreatLlama

I think about how our building has a doorman on duty all of the time. Most of the time they are just sitting at the desk buzzing people in and reading the paper.

Why not have a robot do it?

Nine million reasons. I think about the time my neighbor was having a stroke and how the doorman helped us get her to the ambulance, how they notice a stranger how they alerted the roofing workers when the fire alarm went off... Do I really need to explain this

@troy_frizzell @TheGreatLlama

Many jobs that are called "low skilled" aren't and you find it out if you've ever heard a rich person whine and complain and literally cry about how their new housekeeper isn't as good as the old one.

Housekeeping is an absurdly complex job.