Watch This Chinese Humanoid Robot Change Its Own Battery And Try Not To Get Creeped Out

UBTECH/YouTube

No matter really you consciousness astir humanoid robots, they presently each person a method limitation owed to their shape factor. Unless nan robot is tethered to a powerfulness supply, it needs a battery, and unless you want your robot to beryllium very large, very heavy, and excessively threateningly tremendous to beryllium useful, that artillery has to beryllium compact. Practically speaking, this intends that nan existent procreation of humanoid robots can't tally for agelong without recharging aliases swapping a spent artillery for a caller one.

UBTECH, a Chinese company, has developed a measurement for its humanoid Walker S2 robot to alteration its ain battery. Futurism.com speculates that pinch this capability, nan Walker S2 could run around-the-clock and unit "dark" factories successful China — afloat automated accommodation wherever worldly gets made without humans of immoderate sort, eliminating nan request for lights and nan related power costs. Frankly, I deliberation that's getting up of nan invention curve. But there's nary mobility that a robot changing its ain artillery resolves nan down-time issues that will originate arsenic android workers go much prevalent.

No lie, nan robot changing its ain artillery besides has nan imaginable to creep you out. The Walker S2 appears to person a brace of dorsal packs, each astir nan size of a lunchbox. When it starts to tally debased connected power, nan robot marches complete to a rack that has galore spare batteries. Then nan Walker S2 removes its hands, extracts its ain dormant battery, and replaces it pinch a caller one. It does this pinch immoderate limb articulations that would beryllium achy aliases intolerable for an non-contortionist human. Then backmost to activity for different two-to-four hours, depending connected really overmuch stepping nan robot does.

After covering battery swapping successful nan car industry for almost 2 decades now, and seeing it beautiful overmuch ne'er travel to fruition, I was thrilled to spot an exertion for humanoid robots that makes sense. Imagine that you're moving a mill aliases a storage and you want to utilize a fewer humanoid robots. A first information is going to beryllium really often and really agelong they mightiness request to recharge themselves. If they person to plug successful for an hr aliases more, that intends managing downtown and perchance buying much robots to screen for nan ones that aren't available.

Swapping batteries intends efficaciously nary downtime and less robots. I'll presume that it besides intends little analyzable robots because nan artillery packs are abstracted and tin beryllium quickly swapped if they fail.

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These robots won't instantly person cosmopolitan capabilities, truthful humans tin discontinue worrying astir robots taking each their jobs. But wrong a decade aliases so, I expect each ample mill and storage to person astatine slightest a fewer humanoid robots successful operation. Not armies of robots, mind you! Just mini platoons, doing very vulnerable and repetitive things. And often breaking down, arsenic we fig retired really champion to employment them and repair them.

What astir robots mowing nan section aliases vacuuming nan house? Complete overkill, arsenic we already person inexpensive small bots that tin execute those tasks. It's much apt that Tesla's Optimus robots will beryllium building worldly connected Mars than they'll beryllium mixing cocktails for your meal guests. The irony, for those of america raised connected C-3PO and "The Terminator," is that we mightiness ne'er spot a humanoid robot, unless we're moving astatine a car mill aliases walking successful space.

A precursor to nan Cylons? Again, no. Replacing quality labour is really rather difficult because nan quality instrumentality is truthful versatile. No little a robotics booster than Elon Musk discovered this erstwhile he tried to automate Model 3 production and learned that robots were bad astatine intricate assignments requiring agility and dexterity. That said, we are now seeing humanoid robots adapted to meaningful business applications, a earthy hold of much purpose-engineered robots that person been successful usage for years. With artillery swapping, it's encouraging to spot them learning to return attraction of themselves.