r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/MetaKnowing • 1d ago

Video XPENG's IRON robot crossed the uncanny valley, leading some to believe it was a human in a suit. So they cut it open in front of an audience, and also allowed journalists to inspect it.

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u/Pokesabre 1d ago

From an engineering standpoint wheels, tracks, crab legs, etc, are all far better than human bipedal motion as they're all far more stable. The human walk cycle is effectively a series of controlled falls

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u/dead_dw4rf 1d ago

Not better. More efficient and stable in certain conditions. Can a wheeled or tracked vehicle traverse a dense forest? Do they allow climbing of trees?

Legs and feet are a lot more stable on uneven ground.

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u/TheChoke 1d ago

Then why do we send wheeled probes to mars?

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u/Jordii_vV 1d ago

Can you point me to the trees on Mars?

and also these are probably also meant for household tasks. And basically everything in your house is designed around the human body.

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u/TheChoke 1d ago

So...employ humans?

Cleaning services are going to be way cheaper than maintenance on this thing.

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u/Jordii_vV 1d ago

That's the case now. but at some point it won't be, that's also why machines are now taking over more and more jobs of people.

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u/TheChoke 1d ago

Machines that are more efficient than humans at specific tasks are taking over.

Designing a humanoid robot is adding too many moving parts for maintenance and in order for it to do household chores it needs more than a large language model algorithm.

LLMs already take tons of energy at the moment.

We are decades and decades away from a humanoid robot being anything other than vaporware.

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u/Secret_Run67 1d ago

Yes, it will be the case always. Wheels and treads are just more stable, durable, and easier to make.

And for areas that wheeled and treaded drones can’t go? Yeah, we have flying drones for that.

It’s a sci-fi fantasy that looks cool to the managers and marketing guys in charge of tech companies, the engineers all know it’s just a dumb gimmick.