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Humanoid construction robot installs drywall by itself
If Japan's Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute has its way, construction workers might be a thing of the past. Researchers have built [original] HRP-5P, a humanoid bot that can handle a variety of construction tasks when there's either a staffing shortage or serious hazards. The prototype uses a mix of environment detection, object recognition and careful movement planning to install drywall by itself -- it can hoist up boards and fasten them with a screwdriver.
The design doesn't have as much freedom of movement as a human being, but makes up for that with numerous joints that flex to degrees you wouldn't see in real people. It won't always look the most natural when doing its job, but it'll be effective. It can also correct for slips, and it's not deterred when it has a limited field of view.
Also at The Verge and TechCrunch.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:27PM
The world is full of video game playing NEETs who have no spot in the modern economy to fill; which makes the whole "we got no people to put up drywall" story look VERY suspicious; anyway that massive labor surplus we have makes the endless drive to AI things like car driving sound really weird. Just put that shit on Amazon Turk and drunken college students will click the exact pixel perfect spot to drill a screw (plus or minus how many screwdrivers they drank before turk-ing) and it'll only cost like one cent per hole. If they get drunk enough hell they'll do it for free. If you don't want the guys from 4chan messing with your bot and making it drill screws into the wall in swastika patterns, labor is cheap online so have 51 people vote on where to put the screw and best match wins, and or worst outlier is kicked off the team.
Meanwhile as per books like "The Barbell Prescription" the best thing old people can do is lift weights once in awhile, so ironically this is a useless robot. You want to help old people, invent a robot that changes remote control batteries and programs the universal remote to work the TV and cable-box. Old people don't need less exercise at all, already too fat.