【Guide by TechOrange Editorial Department】
After ChatGPT can understand human speech more and more, maybe the robots in the factory will also understand the words of human colleagues more and more, and will be able to accept various instructions and complete more and more complex tasks. Let’s take a look together, which advanced robotic technologies are changing the field of “smart manufacturing”, and how to prepare as a manufacturer?
The sudden popularity of generative AI in 2023 has plunged human beings into a wave of existential crisis, fearing that their jobs will be replaced, and even more afraid that the world will change overnight. The ChatGPT chat robot without a body alone has made human beings anxious enough, and the technology of intelligent robots with entities is also advancing at a rapid pace. In the Boston Dynamics robot video, the robot’s motion is so realistic that people almost start to doubt whether this super-intelligent robot will directly become a colleague and further enter human life in the future?
In the film, the robot wants to pass the tool kit to the construction workers. It first takes the wooden planks to connect the bridge on the construction site, then throws the tool kit up to the workers, and then flips sideways to the ground. Although the audience probably knows that these are “set good” videos, the robot’s moving posture seems to be more anthropomorphic.Will this wave of AI plus the comprehensive evolution of robot technology change the way of life of human beings in the foreseeable and near future? In fact, the answer is not necessarily.
In fact, robots have of course appeared in human’s home living environment, including sweeping robots with increasingly powerful cleaning functions, nursing robots in hospitals that monitor patients’ physiological indexes, and some that were very popular but did not really make a big splash. Pepper robot, etc. But these robots are only auxiliary assistants, and humans are unlikely to feel threatened.
Collaborative robots that know how to receive a single command are now the mainstream
Robots often appear in industrial scenes, and they do not appear in the form of “humanoid”, but more often exist in the form of mechanical arms, machines, etc. Even in some high-tech fully automated car factories, there are no machine “humans”, and it is more common to see machines and humans working separately on workstations.This is because in the design of factory human-machine collaboration, in addition to efficiency, safety considerations are more important. No matter how automated the machinery is, it is usually only given a “single” function, instead of laying bridges, throwing toolkits and doing somersaults like Boston Dynamics robots.
The Cognitive Robotics Research Group at the University of Tampere in Finland shows that human-machine collaboration in industrial environments has received increasing attention, and all collaborative work is pre-arranged through coding. The degree of intelligence of industrial robots depends on the capabilities of the machines themselves, the degree of reprogramming, the interaction experience with human workers and the speed of redeployment.
in,Human workers should decide on interactive experiences or tasks that are more complex than a single action, because the machine will not know whether the next action of a human colleague will be variable, and even a gap of a few centimeters may bring danger. Now providing instructions for collaborative tasks can also become more advanced, such as using different methods such as voice interaction and graphical interface interaction to command the machine.
Although ChatGPT’s ability to understand human speech has grown significantly recently, the level of understanding of natural language by robots on the production line in factories is actually not that intelligent. Considering the practicability and deployment cost of the production process, general factories will not invest resources in it for the time being. Robot colleagues not only can’t chat, but also can’t understand some workers’ jargon or nicknames. Not to mention, the production noise in the factory can also significantly reduce the accuracy of speech recognition. So more and more researchers have begun to explore the availability of graphical interfaces.
A British company specializing in the design of humanoid robots Engineered Arts A video will be released in 2021, allowing the Ameca robot to show complex and subtle facial expressions, including surprise, frustration, and start talking. At that time, because this robot was too creepy, it once became popular.
But the company launched another video of visiting Ameca in 2022. The robot said directly: “Don’t worry, robots are here to help and serve humans, not to replace humans.” Trying to dispel the fear of the public.Instead of panicking or rejecting robots, think pragmatically about how humans can collaborate with robots, making it a useful tool rather than a source of fear。
* This article is open to partners to reprint, reference materials: unesco、Fast Company、Frontiers、Discover Magazine,Image Source:Boston Dynamics
(Editor in charge: You Maorong)