On things magazine [thingsmagazine.net], I saw a link to a video showing the Honda Asimo robot crashing during a demonstration [autoblog.com]. It's one of those typical demonstrations, where the robot is made to walk around and then walk up a flight of stairs. But something goes wrong, and the robot falls down the stairs.
There's this push for robots that are closer and closer to biological organisms. But I wonder how close we'll ever actually get. It sounds very romantic to try to develop a robot that can walk or run as well as a human, or one that has muscles that are as powerful and efficient as organic muscle. But I think that people think that they'll be able to take the good without the bad.
The thing about humans is that they screw up all of the time. Sure, they can walk efficiently, run relatively quickly, and are flexible enough to do a lot of other complex movements (play soccer, dance, etc). But they also fall down. They break their limbs. They twist their ankles. They trip (due to objects, their own feet, or in my case, even when there isn't anything there).
One of the things that are so attractive about wheels is that they are more robust, and usually don't have these sorts of issues. But as we start seeing more and more legged or humanoid-type robots, we're eventually going to have to figure out what the contingency plans are. Can you imagine having a household robot that trips and falls as much as I do (at least once a week, and unfortunately, usually a lot more)? They're not going to heal like we do. It's going to be a huge pain in the ass to get it serviced (the average person is going to be expected to figure out how to ship a 200lb robot?). Since robots typically aren't soft, they will probably cause more damage to other objects in the process. And they won't have the reflexes to control or break their fall as we do (at least, they probably won't in the appreciable future).
It's a nice idea (especially for fiction writers), but I think it's going to be a long time before these types of robots are commonly in use. More on this tomorrow...
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