The renowned roboticist Rodney Brooks has revealed how he believes humanoid robots will develop in the coming years, and his suggestions may surprise you.
Brooks, an AI pioneer and entrepreneur known for his groundbreaking behavior-based robotics, as well as for co-founding iRobot and Rethink Robotics, said in a recently released article that while there will be lots of humanoid robots 15 years from now, “they will look like neither today’s humanoid robots nor humans,” with some deploying crotch-based eyes for a better understanding of the terrain they’re traversing.
The expert, who also once served as the director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, highlighted how a slew of robotics companies — Figure, LimX Dynamics, Apptronik, and Tesla among them — are aiming for the mass deployment of humanoid robots in industrial settings, working alongside humans or replacing them altogether.
Brooks notes that some of these companies think such a breakthrough could occur “in as soon as two years,” but he suggests that “believing that this will happen any time within decades is pure fantasy thinking.”
A big part of the problem is trying to emulate the intricacies of the human hand for natural movement.
“No human-like robot hands have demonstrated much in the way of dexterity, in any general sense,” Brooks says. “And none have inspired designs that have made it into deployment in real world applications.”
The roboticist also points out how adult-human-sized humanoid robots pose significant safety challenges in shared human environments because their full-scale mass and powerful actuators could potentially cause severe injury if they fall or move unexpectedly, unlike the current crop of smaller humanoid robots that pose less danger.
“My advice to people is to not come closer than three meters to a full-size walking robot,” Brooks says, adding, “Until someone comes up with a better version of a two-legged walking robot that is much safer to be near, and even in contact with, we will not see humanoid robots get certified to be deployed in zones that also have people in them.”
The expert said he believes that humanoid robots will end up switching to wheels for feet, “at first two, and later maybe more, with nothing that any longer really resembles human legs in gross form,” adding, “But they will still be called humanoid robots.”
Brooks also suggests there will be versions “which variously have one, two, and three arms. Some of those arms will have five-fingered hands, but a lot will have two-fingered parallel jaw grippers. Some may have suction cups. But they will still be called humanoid robots.”
The he suggests that others will feature “a lot of sensors that are not passive cameras, and so they will have eyes that see with active light, or in non-human frequency ranges, and they may have eyes in their hands, and even eyes looking down from near their crotch to see the ground so that they can locomote better over uneven surfaces. But they will still be called humanoid robots.”
Brooks said that in the coming years, “a lot of money” will disappear in the development of humanoid robots, with today’s versions eventually falling by the wayside.
Is Brooks right? There are a lot of companies working on some pretty impressive humanoid robots right now, so it’s going to be fascinating to see how the technology develops over the coming years.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.