I felt like an actor in a science fiction film. Qijiang No. 2, a 1.8-meter-tall, 60-kilogram humanoid robot, stood in front of me, using its 38 degrees of freedom to fold clothes, open bottles, pour water, or wash dishes.
Qijiang 2, from the Jianghuai Technology Center, was showing off its coolness in the “Smart Robotics Zone” of the International Exhibition organized in the context of the 2024 World Manufacturing Convention by the Government of Anhui Province, (China), in its capital, Hefei.
This humanoid robot represents well the extraordinary advances that have taken place in robotics in recent years, for home and industry.
International media report that the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had already published a guideline in 2023 with the aim of promoting the mass-production of robots and integrating them into everyday life by 2027.
They are on their way. I found robots in restaurants (from the main chain that offers the famous “Beijing Duck” in Shanghai) that help to wait tables, as well as robots that move around using on their own the elevator of the hotel where I stayed in Shanghai to carry out their tasks.
The Chinese company Agibot, for example, develops humanoid robots capable of performing physical and cognitive tasks, equipped with advanced sensors, cameras and artificial intelligence algorithms. Not only does it have “skilled hands” but it also has an “embedded intelligent brain” that can understand the user’s intention and perceive the environment in which it operates.
The month after my visit to China, the American company Tesla presented Optimus, its humanoid robot designed to perform household tasks, from cleaning to mowing the lawn and offering personal assistance. It promises that, when it gets to be mass-produced, it will be offered for sale between 20 and 30 thousand dollars, a value like that of a car in the American market.
These simple anecdotes and observations show that the development of robots resembling and imitating humans is booming and is set to progress in a disruptive and surprising way in the short and medium term, basically due to advances in dexterity, movement and social interaction.
Improvements in actuators and sensors allow humanoid robots to now walk, run and perform complex tasks, and advances in artificial intelligence (especially in natural language processing, reinforcement learning – machine learning technique – and vision and perception systems) allow them to engage in conversations and display human-like expressions.
Thanks to these advances, applications are currently being explored and developed to use humanoid robots not only in factories, but also in customer service, health care or accompanying the elderly and sick.
Beyond humanoid robots, a whole range of new robots have expanded the scope of their abilities and accelerated their adoption in all types of industries.
From “cobots” – collaborative robots designed to work alongside humans by augmenting their capabilities (for example, assisting a surgeon or collaborating with a programmer) to swarm robotics (which attempts to replicate the collaborative behavior of social insects) to coordinate robots involved in the search for survivors or in the construction or repair of infrastructure; to applications for agriculture or space exploration, a new generation of robots is revolutionizing our daily lives and promises great changes.
Of course, this reality forces us to consider the ethical and regulatory issues associated with these developments. I have addressed this issue in a previous post. Here I will only say that the main dimensions of this dilemma include privacy, job displacement, and safety standards associated with these developments.
The way we address these challenges will largely determine what level of conflict this new generation of robots that is rapidly approaching will cause in our lives.
