Our Robotics Future by Elad Inbar; self-published; © 2024; ISBN 9798344-588759; 251 pages; $16.19 on Amazon.
SAN DIEGO — Israeli-American Elad Inbar, chief executive officer of the Dallas, Texas-based RobotLAB, has written a primer on robots in use today in a variety of industries. Consistent with the title of this book, he also peeks into a future when humanoid robots will be able to perform more sophisticated tasks.
The easy-to-read book’s chapters include discussions of robots currently used for making deliveries, cleaning surfaces, customer service, cooking, security, agriculture, and education – all of which RobotLab can provide and service.
The chapter that I found most interesting is the one about “humanoid robots” which will someday be constructed to master “everything around us from the tools we use to the dishwashers and washing machines we load.”
While the industry is not there yet, the future likely will produce “a robot that can help cook all your meals and clean your house, including doing all the laundry, or drive your car to the grocery store, shop based on your preferences, and then bag your produce and food and then drive back home and put everything in the right place.”
“Once they become fully operational,” Inbar goes on to predict, “humanoid robots can perform many of the tedious, repetitive, and dangerous tasks that we now do. While these robots may displace some workers, they will free us up to do more interesting jobs and will create new jobs in new areas and in new industries.”
Does that sound like science fiction? Inbar reports that at the World Robot Conference in August 2024, held in Beijing, China, he saw 150 different prototypes for humanoid robots—none so far capable of doing all the described multiple tasks but gaining on that objective.
He writes that strides have been made in motors to run the humanoid robots and balance them so they don’t tip over. The developers have designed robots with more computing power, fine motor skills; environmental censors, contextual understanding, image processing, motion planning, and which are able to interact with humans in a prescribed ways, but —
“So far, the main challenges to constructing and deploying humanoid robots have been to build hardware that can behave, balance, and move like a human,” Inbar says. “Once the hardware has evolved far enough, enabling the humanoid robot to take on more tasks will merely be a matter of loading new software. Despite the lack of commercially available products at the time of writing this book, many companies are making impressive developments toward launching a fully functional humanoid robot.”
The humanoid robots won’t necessarily replace non-humanoid robots that have been developed to perform specific tasks such as making deliveries or cleaning large surfaces, but rather could direct them, freeing humans who now must tend to the specialized robots to go on to other tasks.
The future may not be very far away, and “in the next dozen years, or even in the next three years, fully capable robots that can download skills may become an everyday reality.”
*
Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.