Humanoid robots at home?

Technological companies are investing huge amounts of money to develop humanoid robots for use in the home. One such company, Figure AI, claims that the introduction of humanoid robots into the home will revolutionize elder care and the performance of routine household tasks. Goldman Sachs predicts that the humanoid robot market could be worth $38 billion by 2035.

In an article published in IEEE Spectrum, Maya Cakmak of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington describes a study conducted with students on the acceptance of the introduction of humanoid robots in the home. Their survey concluded that people generally prefer special purpose robots over humanoids. They see special-purpose robots as safer, more private, and ultimately more comfortable to have in their homes… a Roomba for cleaning, a medication dispenser for pills, a stairlift for stairs… Humanoids were described as bulky and unnecessary, while specialized robots were seen as less intrusive and more discreet.

Respondents reacted against the use of robots in dangerous operations, such as carrying them down stairs, while accepting robots for trivial tasks, such as folding laundry after washing. They pointed out a series of problems that could be classified as follows:

·         Dangers associated with the use of humanoid robots: Robots could stumble, fall, suffer unexpected errors, both in their hardware and software (since every complex program hides bugs), or run out of battery when they are needed.

·         Privacy issues: People fear that humanoid robots at home could use their cameras to send private images to the cloud, be remotely controlled by third parties, or fall under the control of hackers.

The article summarizes those conditions in this way:

Participants said they would accept humanoids if they were safe, worked reliably, and didn’t cost more than the alternatives. Those are very big ifs.

A subgroup of respondents of the survey who have motor limitations and are experienced users of assistance expressed thus their position: It has to be 100 percent safe because I cannot escape it. Not one of them wanted a humanoid.

This is the conclusion of the article:

Simpler designs with more cartoon-like features are more likely to be accepted as companions. We may even want home robots with no human-like features at all, so they can be viewed as tools rather than social agents. I believe those who would benefit most from in-home robots—including the rapidly growing population of older adults—would prefer robots that empower them to do things for themselves, rather than ones that attempt to replace human caregivers. Yet humanoid companies are openly pursuing the latter.

In another article, to appear in the October issue of IEEE Spectrum, titled Why humanoid robots aren’t scaling, Evan Ackerman shares this pessimistic view and writes this:

[A]s of now, the market for humanoid robots is almost entirely hypothetical… future projections seem to be based on an extraordinarily broad interpretation of jobs that a capable, efficient, and safe humanoid robot—which does not currently exist—might conceivably be able to do. Can the current reality connect with the promised scale?... The issues of demand, battery life, reliability, and safety all need to be solved before humanoid robots can scale. But a more fundamental question to ask is whether a bipedal robot is actually worth the trouble.

It could be that the future of humanoid robots may be similar to what is happening with the Internet of Things (IoT): massive increases and large-scale installations in homes were predicted, but were adopted much more slowly. A decade ago, it was predicted that IoT applications would be used in the home to connect household appliances (washing machines and refrigerators) and all kinds of electronic devices to the Internet. Ten years later, the implementation figures are clearly lower than expected.

It is true that a study conducted at the end of 2023 estimated that half of Spanish homes were connected via IoT, but the same study indicated that less than 14% were aware of it. Why? Because burglar and occupancy alarms installed in many homes, and health alarm devices for the elderly, are being counted as IoT devices, but many people do not consider them typical elements of a smart home, while the increments in those devices most talked about a decade ago (IOT for washing machines and refrigerators) can be considered minimal.

The same post in Spanish

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Manuel Alfonseca