From IEEE Spectrum, April 2:
Gill Pratt Says Humanoid Robots’ Moment Is Finally Here
The architect of the DARPA Robotics Challenge explains how their brains have caught up
In 2012, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC). The multiyear, multimillion-dollar competition for disaster robotics resulted in Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, some absolutely incredible moments from one of the very first generations of useful humanoid robots, and a blooper video that will live on forever.
Gill Pratt, the architect of the competition, had a very clear understanding of what the DRC was going to do for robotics. “The reason [for the DARPA Robotics Challenge] is actually to push the field forward and make this capability a reality,” Pratt told IEEE Spectrum in 2012. At the time, he pointed out that before the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 and the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007, driverless cars for complex environments essentially did not exist. He saw the DRC doing the same thing for robotics.
It’s been about a decade since the conclusion of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, and many in the industry believe humanoid robots are about to have the transformative moment that Pratt predicted. But as is common in robotics, things tend to be far more difficult than it seems like they should be. Spectrum checked in with Pratt, now the CEO of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), to find out what’s holding humanoid robotics back, what he thinks these robots should be doing (or not doing), and how to navigate the humanoid hype bubble.
What do you think about this robotics moment that we’re in?
Gill Pratt: What has changed is actually not about humanoids. Many people have been building research robots in the humanoid form for a long time. What’s different now isn’t the body, but the brain. We have always had this disparity in the robotics field where the mechanisms we were building were incredibly capable, but we didn’t really have the means for making the utility of the robot match that potential. Now we actually do, and that’s because of the AI revolution that has happened over the last few years....
....MUCH MORE
More recently at IEEE Spectrum (April 14):
