Robot helpers could be coming sooner than you think
A pioneering lab at UCLA has been developing humanoid companions meant to work, and maybe even play alongside us.
Professor Dennis Hong is a mechanical and aerospace engineer with a love of Star Wars and its charismatic robots. Now he and his graduate students at the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (ROMELA) are developing next-generation humanoids.
Hong said, "For the robots to use tools designed for humans, I believe that robot needs to be the human's shape and size."
Much of the technology is about advancing how robots move efficiently so they can complete tasks, including dangerous ones.
"So if there's an accident at a nuclear power plant, there's radiation, people got to go. So this robot can not only go up and down stairs, drive a car, open and close valves," said Hong.
However, the latest star of the lab is its battery-powered goddess, Artemis.
Hong said, "Robots to help people with three Ds-dull, dangerous, dirty tasks. This robot will be able to walk up stairs, rubble piles, outdoors."
Artemis is only the first version of a humanoid that Hong said could eventually handle ordinary tasks.
"These robots, again, helping everyday in home cooking, taking out the trash, all those kinds of things. We call this area silver robotics for elderly care," said Hong.
While AI is driving the brains of these robots, Hong said the hardware needed is still playing catch-up. In robotics, however, evolution can happen quickly.
According to Hong, "We're inventing the future. And sometimes there's new technologies that we're not anticipating that happens and the development just skyrockets."
A humanoid housekeeper may be decades away, or closer than we think. Artemis was named in honor of the Greek goddess, and the robot is scheduled to travel in July to France, where it will take part in the soccer competition of the 2023 Robocup. This is an international scientific meeting where robots demonstrate what they can do.