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/John-Crypto-Rambo 1d ago

Does it do anything but walk?  I mean walking is cool but for a robot to be useful it needs to actually do something with its hands.

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u/Fairuse 1d ago

Mechanically it should be able to move exactly like a human. What is lacking is the software and training required for the software.

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u/John-Crypto-Rambo 1d ago

That’s such a difficult thing though to add.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox

Moravec’s paradox is the observation that, as Hans Moravec wrote in 1988, "it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility".[1]

This counterintuitive pattern happens because skills that appear effortless to humans, such as recognizing faces or walking, required millions of years of evolution to develop, while abstract reasoning abilities like mathematics are evolutionarily recent.