By: Jacob Zari
A humanoid robot has been seen jogging, jumping, and tossing a toolbag on video recently, which poses the question, can they be regularly seen sooner than many have envisioned?
Boston Dynamics, a robotics company that designs and manufactures robots themselves, released the demo video in the middle of January, showing off their research and development robot, called Atlas.
Atlas has 28 hydraulic joints all across the body, each positioned in the likeness of where a human’s joints are. Instead of electricity in the joints, there is pressurized hydraulic oil threaded in that provides the robot human-like mobility.
For Atlas to be able to “see” and react to its surroundings, it uses a time-of-flight depth camera. Pocket-Lint explains that the camera “uses infrared light (lasers invisible to human eyes) to determine depth information - a bit like how a bat senses its surroundings.”
Boston Dynamics says that their depth camera is able to collect data at 15 frames per second. As a comparison, the human eye can see and interpret data anywhere from 30 to 60 frames per second. This is where the questions of efficiency and reliability come in.
Kody Pierce, a student worker at the engineering lab at Georgia Southern spoke on the reliability of robots. Pierce says, “it’s more about how the data is collected that can lead to malfunctions.
“For instance, Tesla has been having a lot of issues with their autopilot because it’s mainly camera-based,” Pierce adds, “Cameras can only spit out a one dimensional image which can be difficult to get accurate distance measurements from, doable but extremely difficult. If the measurements aren’t accurate then the whole system is theoretically blind which can lead to some pretty serious issues.”
Issues are the very last thing that Construction Managers want on the job site. There is a lot riding on getting a job done not only in time, but meeting the budget for that job as well. Construction Managers have to be very aware of not only the risks of humanoid robots, but also the current limitations as well.
Matthew Ricks, an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Construction at Georgia Southern, put it this way, “ Take a look at those robots in Japan that can shoot three-pointers. They are making the shots, but they are ridiculously slow. So we know that it can get a task done, but how efficient is it? On the job site, that is what we have to worry about.”
So the question to ask is how long is it going to take until humanoid robots, like Atlas, are ready to be extensively used in the workforce?
“I’d say robots can already act as quickly as humans.” Pierce says. “It is more about can they understand the environment and different situations the same as humans. I feel like it’ll be awhile before we get to that point.”