When it comes to robots, is bigger better? A 40 foot high humanoid robot is the focus of the Guardian piece linked below.
Highlights:
1) “It resembles an enormous, malevolent robot from 1980s sci-fi but West Japan Railway’s new humanoid employee was designed with nothing more sinister than a spot of painting and gardening in mind.”
2) “Starting this month, the large machine with enormous arms, a crude, disproportionately small Wall-E-like head and coke-bottle eyes mounted on a truck – which can drive on rails – will be put to use for maintenance work on the company’s network.”
3) “Its operator sits in a cockpit on the truck, ‘seeing’ through the robot’s eyes via cameras and operating its powerful limbs and hands remotely.”
4) “With a vertical reach of 12 metres (40ft), the machine can use various attachments for its arms to carry objects as heavy as 40kg (88lb), hold a brush to paint or use a chainsaw.”
5) “The technology will help fill worker shortages in ageing Japan as well as reduce accidents such as workers falling from high places or suffering electric shocks, the company said.”
6) “In the future, we hope to use machines for all kinds of maintenance operations of our infrastructure,” company president Kazuaki Hasegawa told a recent press conference.
Dave’s take: When many people consider humanoid robots, they see their potential to replace a human worker. But this 40 foot high example can pretty clearly replace entire teams of human workers.
While this example might be designed for railroad maintenance tasks, with its ability to lift heavy loads, it’s not hard to imagine a number of other applications in construction, manufacturing, warehousing, infrastructure and more. And even relatively elderly people can perform heavy operations with the assistance of this device.
The robot revolution continues its march, and the world will never be the same.
https://lnkd.in/gbPi7-39
Featuring contributions from - Firat Ileri, Partner at Hummingbird Ventures Tessa Lau, Cofounder and CEO of Dusty Robotics, Patric Hellermann, General partner for Foundamental, Gabriele Tinelli, Investor at Foundamental, Kevin Cardona, Head of entrepreneurial innovation at Leonard, Alice Leung, Vice president, platform and product strategy at Brick & Mortar Ventures Philip Reid, UK head of innovation and transformation at VINCI Construction, Noah Ready-Campbell, Cofounder and CEO of Built Robotics, Péter Fankhauser, Founder and CEO of ANYbotics, Artem Kuchukov, Cofounder and CEO of KEWAZO, Yogesh Patel, Quality, Improvement & Innovations Director at VINCI Construction Sten Tamkivi , Cofounder and Partner at Plural Maria Telleria, Co-Founder and CTO at Canvas Julien Villalongue Director at Leonard, Tom Yeshurun, Founder and CEO of Civ Robotics