Problems of modern robotics, or why no one needs robots today (with rare exceptions)
It is naturally not about industrial robots, they have firmly occupied their niche and they are fine. But here "household" robots, robots for ordinary people somehow still have not received at least some decent distribution.
At the same time, fantastic works, and the theoretical concept of robotics, as it were, drew us bright pictures of the widespread use of robots. Robots were supposed to help people, taking on difficult or dreary work.
However, when it came to the actual development, the developers came across a lack of normal ideas for using robots. Given that from the technological side, everything is generally not bad, but where to apply this experience is not very clear, and those attempts that are, look unconvincing.
')
But everything is in order, and I will begin, in fact, with the good that is.
Designer robots
The first thing that comes to mind is the robot designers. Lego mindstorms and things like that.
There are a lot of designers of robots and they usually represent a set of parts for collecting a robot chassis, a controller in one form or another (“robot brain”) and a set of various sensors.
Having a small instruction and a bit of perseverance, you can assemble a small robot out of these parts, even though it will be in essence just a moving machine.
Using the same opportunities Lego, you can collect just insane mechanisms. From hexapods to tanks with rocket launchers. From the mechanism for collecting the Rubik's cube, to the mechanical artist drawing Mona Lisa.
Such designers are all good, and Lego is especially good. However, there is one thing. This is never a product for ordinary people. These are products for engineers. Engineers, perhaps, not by profession, but by vocation, but still engineers, that is, for those people who love to construct mechanisms, and there are, by definition, not so many, which means that these designers will not make robots something natural for society. Something natural as, for example, computers in due time became.
Vacuum cleaning robots
Most probably, the mass use of robots in everyday life at the moment is robot vacuum cleaners. Moreover, their cost decreases with time, they perform their function quite well, helping to clean the house.
Of course, they are not able to do a full cleaning for a person, but their use accurately increases the cleanliness of the house. And this is so far the most successful use of robots in everyday life, as indicated by the sales of such robots, people buy them by the millions.
As a result, we have one really massive product, and one product for training. And for now this is all that robotics can boast of. The rest of the representatives of the robots are not so impressive.
Robots dog
At the time, Sony has released a funny dog-robot Aibo. Then it seemed that, finally, the robots would come to the home of each person. However, in the end, these dogs did not show good sales, and it was not only the price that was not the smallest, but there were enough cheaper analogues, but their sales were also mediocre. The fact is that such robots are just an expensive toy, and in such things there are not very good properties, they play with them for a week or two, and then they are thrown into the far corner as superfluous. That is why they did not become a mass product. They will not use for a long time.
Androids robots
Nao, Darwin OP and a number of the rest. On the one hand, it is used as a trainer, and then they act in one category with Lego mindstorms, and on the other, they are used for entertainment. In this case, they have the same problems as robot dogs. This is an expensive toy, which is played with a week, and then thrown far away.
Exhibition robots
Here from personal experience. I visited the Tomsk forum of young scientists U-novus, and a robot from Moscow Institute of Technology traveled there. I will not say anything about the robot itself, but since I wanted to confirm my theoretical guesses in practice, I spent quite a lot of time next to him watching people who approached him.
And there were quite a lot of people interested! One problem, after playing with this robot for a couple of minutes, everyone lost interest in him.
This is the main problem of such "promotions". They are disposable. They really attract attention to themselves, but only once, they don’t care about them anymore, which means that the tasks that are theoretically attributed to them, like the best customer acquisition, will be carried out, but until the moment everyone sees them robots.
For the sake of justice, it should be noted that as guides or mobile reference books, they can do quite well for themselves, but the question is whether there are many guides or whether mobile reference books are needed when there are just information signs ...
Quadcopters
Let's agree that we do not consider those copters that are controlled directly from the consoles, which means that they are not robots.
There will be not so many applications that have come up with so far.
Well, firstly "dear selfie stick." Kvadrokopter flying behind the owner and filming it on video. In general, and in general, the idea is not bad, it’s not that there are a lot of extremes, but the videos with them, which are obtained from the copters, always look just awesome. However, there is one thing about which I will say a little later. Well, and besides, this is mainly for extreme people, at least for tourists, so it’s probably not to talk about mass character here.
The second is the delivery of goods. From the little drones in the restaurant, to the transport of pizza or other small packages. Well, drones in restaurants are a bad idea right away, everyone who has seen lacerations from quadrocopter blades will immediately understand the horror of using them indoors.
Freight shipping is better. If we take away the risks that juvenile vandals will happily hunt for such things, then we get an excellent alternative to “human” couriers. The speed of shipment, independence from traffic jams, and the overall low cost and in the end a great product! Would be…
It would have been if it were not for one fundamental problem facing, in other matters, not only before the industry of robots, but, in general, before humanity. And the problem is the low capacity of modern batteries. All current quadcopters can fly for about 30 minutes. Some manage to stretch the flight time to the whole hour, but no more. How much can be done in half an hour? Not really.
For the same extreme that threatens copter, when will the half hour pass? It will fall somewhere in the cave / water / volcano / whatever, and this is the loss of not the cheapest copter and certainly the expensive camera. Transportation of goods is also not very realistic, it seems, you either transported one parcel and then you sit charging, or you risk dropping some china on the heads of street passers-by.
Here, however, it is necessary to clarify that large companies are trying to circumvent this limitation, for example, by creating stations for recharging drones, in which the kopter will either recharge and continue to transport the parcel, or transfer it to another drone that is already charged.
But these are all half measures, and until they can fundamentally improve the battery capacity, drones are unlikely to be able to perform their functions as intended.
Other
There are several other types of robots, telepresence robots, nanny robots, teacher robots, etc. But some of them are in principle little needed, while others are still at a too early stage of development to talk about their success. Well, in any case, these robots, even if they succeed, will occupy a very narrow niche.
If you forgot something or a fool and do not understand, write in the comments.
Total
But in the end, quite a sad situation. With rare exceptions, people have not yet figured out exactly why it is necessary to use robots, so that they firmly enter the lives of ordinary people, and become the same natural "human companion", such as computers.
PS I didn’t consider autopilots in cars, as they are a little out of the standard “look” of robots
At the same time, fantastic works, and the theoretical concept of robotics, as it were, drew us bright pictures of the widespread use of robots. Robots were supposed to help people, taking on difficult or dreary work.
However, when it came to the actual development, the developers came across a lack of normal ideas for using robots. Given that from the technological side, everything is generally not bad, but where to apply this experience is not very clear, and those attempts that are, look unconvincing.
')
But everything is in order, and I will begin, in fact, with the good that is.
Designer robots
The first thing that comes to mind is the robot designers. Lego mindstorms and things like that.
There are a lot of designers of robots and they usually represent a set of parts for collecting a robot chassis, a controller in one form or another (“robot brain”) and a set of various sensors.
Having a small instruction and a bit of perseverance, you can assemble a small robot out of these parts, even though it will be in essence just a moving machine.
Using the same opportunities Lego, you can collect just insane mechanisms. From hexapods to tanks with rocket launchers. From the mechanism for collecting the Rubik's cube, to the mechanical artist drawing Mona Lisa.
Such designers are all good, and Lego is especially good. However, there is one thing. This is never a product for ordinary people. These are products for engineers. Engineers, perhaps, not by profession, but by vocation, but still engineers, that is, for those people who love to construct mechanisms, and there are, by definition, not so many, which means that these designers will not make robots something natural for society. Something natural as, for example, computers in due time became.
Vacuum cleaning robots
Most probably, the mass use of robots in everyday life at the moment is robot vacuum cleaners. Moreover, their cost decreases with time, they perform their function quite well, helping to clean the house.
Of course, they are not able to do a full cleaning for a person, but their use accurately increases the cleanliness of the house. And this is so far the most successful use of robots in everyday life, as indicated by the sales of such robots, people buy them by the millions.
As a result, we have one really massive product, and one product for training. And for now this is all that robotics can boast of. The rest of the representatives of the robots are not so impressive.
Robots dog
At the time, Sony has released a funny dog-robot Aibo. Then it seemed that, finally, the robots would come to the home of each person. However, in the end, these dogs did not show good sales, and it was not only the price that was not the smallest, but there were enough cheaper analogues, but their sales were also mediocre. The fact is that such robots are just an expensive toy, and in such things there are not very good properties, they play with them for a week or two, and then they are thrown into the far corner as superfluous. That is why they did not become a mass product. They will not use for a long time.
Androids robots
Nao, Darwin OP and a number of the rest. On the one hand, it is used as a trainer, and then they act in one category with Lego mindstorms, and on the other, they are used for entertainment. In this case, they have the same problems as robot dogs. This is an expensive toy, which is played with a week, and then thrown far away.
Exhibition robots
Here from personal experience. I visited the Tomsk forum of young scientists U-novus, and a robot from Moscow Institute of Technology traveled there. I will not say anything about the robot itself, but since I wanted to confirm my theoretical guesses in practice, I spent quite a lot of time next to him watching people who approached him.
And there were quite a lot of people interested! One problem, after playing with this robot for a couple of minutes, everyone lost interest in him.
This is the main problem of such "promotions". They are disposable. They really attract attention to themselves, but only once, they don’t care about them anymore, which means that the tasks that are theoretically attributed to them, like the best customer acquisition, will be carried out, but until the moment everyone sees them robots.
For the sake of justice, it should be noted that as guides or mobile reference books, they can do quite well for themselves, but the question is whether there are many guides or whether mobile reference books are needed when there are just information signs ...
Quadcopters
Let's agree that we do not consider those copters that are controlled directly from the consoles, which means that they are not robots.
There will be not so many applications that have come up with so far.
Well, firstly "dear selfie stick." Kvadrokopter flying behind the owner and filming it on video. In general, and in general, the idea is not bad, it’s not that there are a lot of extremes, but the videos with them, which are obtained from the copters, always look just awesome. However, there is one thing about which I will say a little later. Well, and besides, this is mainly for extreme people, at least for tourists, so it’s probably not to talk about mass character here.
The second is the delivery of goods. From the little drones in the restaurant, to the transport of pizza or other small packages. Well, drones in restaurants are a bad idea right away, everyone who has seen lacerations from quadrocopter blades will immediately understand the horror of using them indoors.
Freight shipping is better. If we take away the risks that juvenile vandals will happily hunt for such things, then we get an excellent alternative to “human” couriers. The speed of shipment, independence from traffic jams, and the overall low cost and in the end a great product! Would be…
It would have been if it were not for one fundamental problem facing, in other matters, not only before the industry of robots, but, in general, before humanity. And the problem is the low capacity of modern batteries. All current quadcopters can fly for about 30 minutes. Some manage to stretch the flight time to the whole hour, but no more. How much can be done in half an hour? Not really.
For the same extreme that threatens copter, when will the half hour pass? It will fall somewhere in the cave / water / volcano / whatever, and this is the loss of not the cheapest copter and certainly the expensive camera. Transportation of goods is also not very realistic, it seems, you either transported one parcel and then you sit charging, or you risk dropping some china on the heads of street passers-by.
Here, however, it is necessary to clarify that large companies are trying to circumvent this limitation, for example, by creating stations for recharging drones, in which the kopter will either recharge and continue to transport the parcel, or transfer it to another drone that is already charged.
But these are all half measures, and until they can fundamentally improve the battery capacity, drones are unlikely to be able to perform their functions as intended.
Other
There are several other types of robots, telepresence robots, nanny robots, teacher robots, etc. But some of them are in principle little needed, while others are still at a too early stage of development to talk about their success. Well, in any case, these robots, even if they succeed, will occupy a very narrow niche.
If you forgot something or a fool and do not understand, write in the comments.
Total
But in the end, quite a sad situation. With rare exceptions, people have not yet figured out exactly why it is necessary to use robots, so that they firmly enter the lives of ordinary people, and become the same natural "human companion", such as computers.
PS I didn’t consider autopilots in cars, as they are a little out of the standard “look” of robots
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/397507/
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