Walker S1 humanoid robot starts factory work at BYD
Walker S1 humanoid robot starts factory work at BYD
www.metameha.com
Walker S1 humanoid robot starts factory work at BYD - Metameha
Time for robot taxes:
https://chat.qwen.ai/s/t_1ef0a516-cf71-4e6a-91a3-35778a6ee424?fev=0.0.248
Given that it's a humanoid robot, I suspect that this is more of a marketing stunt than any practical deployment of robots.
Humanoid robots don't make a ton of sense in manufacturing. Why mimic the sub-optimal anatomy of a human when you can make your robotic work slave have any appendage you want, which are designed to be optinal for their task along the assembly line?
Humanoid robots mostly only make sense in spaces that need to be designed for humans (like homes or hospitals) where the robot needs to regularly interact with human infrastructure.
Sure but if you have brand new machines that are supposed to be operated by humans, buying a 10k humanoid compared to paying some real humans is going to appeal a lot of entrepreneurs: and you'll be able to mix the two kinds of workers initially, see Amazon warehouses as an example.
Now your speaking my language.
I guess the idea is that humanoid robots ideally require no adjustment to the factory, they can just use the tools made for human workers.
Because the automated tools are human scale
Even if you rework them all to be fully automatic, you still need a human scale robot to move the work pieces from station to station
There is a difference between human-scale and humanoid.
Human-scale just means the robot needs to fit in a space where humans should also fit, while humanoid means it is supposed to resemble a humans not just in size, but also in shape. A humanoid robot would generally have a torso, two arms, two legs, and probably a head.
As an example, a roomba fits in a human environment but is not humanoid. You could hypothetically make a humanoid robot that is capable of using an ordinary vacuum to vacuum the same space, but it would be significantly more complex and more expensive to do that. A purpose-built roomba is a much more cost-effective solution for cleaning up after humans.
In auto manufacturing, the cars move on robot carts, and the parts move in assembly lines and are manipulated by arm robots.
The training data for a lot of robots comes from tele operation so that form factor is going to stay important for some time. And making the whole plant basically wheelchair accessible isn't worth it for now. There are variants with a wheeled base but once you add in some balancing for heavier objects and kneeling to pick stuff up it's not much cheaper.