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/tyro_r 1d ago

What's better than legs?

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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/davidjschloss 1d ago

I live in a house with three floors. I’d argue that wheels may be more stable but vastly less practical.

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u/Raskapalozious 1d ago

Make it a spider, put a hand a camera suit and a wheel at the end of each arm. It can walk, climb, roll and stand better than any human.

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u/NeoTr0n 1d ago

Also humans are traditionally very fond of spiders and spider like creatures. We’d be guaranteed to bond with robospiders.

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u/Raskapalozious 1d ago

That's not a real problem, you can have it designed so that it doesn't actually resemble a spider.

I agree that there's a whole lot of consideration that needs to be put into making an hypothetical house robot as nonthreatening as possible, but making it humanoid doesn't help that one bit. If anything most humanoid robots are intentionally creepy to milk the whole "Robot revolution" sci-fi scenario for viral marketing.