> Because that robot isn’t even being vicious and will hurt more.
Rodney Brooks at the MIT AI Lab was a big advocate of something called "series elastic actuators." The idea was was that you didn't allow motors to directly turn robot joints. Instead, all motors acted through some kind of elastic. And the robots could also measure how much resistance they encountered and back off.
MIT had a number of demos of robots that played nicely around fragile humans. I remember video of a grad student stopping a robot arm with their head.
Now, using series elastic actuators will sacrifice some amount of speed or precision. You wouldn't want to do it for industrial robots. And of course, robots also tend to be heavy and made of metal, so even if they move gently, they still pose real risks.
But real progress has been made on these problems.
I think you're probably right, and those non-linear systems are going to make me have to increase my estimate for how long it takes for a robot to go from 5 year old child to ninja physicality. The more complex the feedback mechanisms, the more complexity there is in, for instance, screwing in a screw as fast as possible.
Rodney Brooks at the MIT AI Lab was a big advocate of something called "series elastic actuators." The idea was was that you didn't allow motors to directly turn robot joints. Instead, all motors acted through some kind of elastic. And the robots could also measure how much resistance they encountered and back off.
MIT had a number of demos of robots that played nicely around fragile humans. I remember video of a grad student stopping a robot arm with their head.
Now, using series elastic actuators will sacrifice some amount of speed or precision. You wouldn't want to do it for industrial robots. And of course, robots also tend to be heavy and made of metal, so even if they move gently, they still pose real risks.
But real progress has been made on these problems.