Functional androids/gynoids in our lifetime?

[Seattleite]

I've been thinking about weird things, do that a lot, and I realised there'd be a HUGE market for robots that could look and act believably as people. I know this idea is so not original there's no way nobody's working on it, and they'd make a fortune if they could make an affordable (read: <$10,000 and <$1,000/year upkeep) model, but how likely is it that they'll manage a passable facsimile in the next, say, 20-30 years?

 

In order to qualify, it needs:

Competant navigation. (Hardest part.)

Highly competant voice and facial recognition.

Convincing artificial personalities.

Learning AI.

VERY good safety precautions.

An appropriate power source (easiest part) and strong, efficient, flexible motorised parts.

A LOT of political and religious hurdles leaped. And I mean a LOT. (Actually, nevermind navigation. THIS is the hardest part. Of anything. EVER.)

[BTGBullseye]

I'll tell you something, I have heard directly from several of the higher-ups in the Catholic church, and they think that androids are cool, and would love to see them happen. So it's not where any of the religious scruples are coming from.

 

They're working on the AI right now, (most of the improvements are coming from Google) and the mechanics are already here... The power supply isn't as easy as you might think, since it would probly require a lot more than you might think. (also something they're working on)

 

Safety precautions were developed by Isaac Asimov, and are already being integrated into current AI experiments.

 

Voice and face recognition is still far from ideal for this, but it's improving very rapidly. (again, most of the improvements are coming from Google)

 

Navigation is already developed, and Google has the technology in development to make it easily available to the masses.

 

Convincing personalities will come when the full AI arrives. (just teach it a general bland personality, and let it expand on it by watching videos)

[Seattleite]

For starters, stairs are still too much for our robots. Ask ASIMO. As for personality, not really hard. We've got some very convincing chatbots now, game AIs are getting very good, and some more "sophisticated" dating sims fake emotion pretty well, combine the three. Add on lipsyncing (easy) and emotive faces and you're done there. It's not a true intelligence or personality, but it'll pass light inspection and can be freely customized to fit the user's desires.

 

And Asimov's rules are the goal, it's the execution that's the problem. And we need them to work well, not turn out like an Asimov novel. I think making them simply not capable of many things that are too dangerous to allow a robot to handle is the best course. They can't drive, use lethal weaponry, operate heavy machinery, or anything else along those lines.

 

On the energy end... No, not really. A compact combustion engine could power them *today*. So could a could a lithium-ion battery if you don't mind lots of stopping to plug in or keeping them plugged in all the time. The issue is that the former power source needs... Work to be viable (say, a switch to renewable hydrogen or ethanol) and the latter would last *at most* a day, probably a lot less, before needing to be plugged in and is REALLY expensive, at least until Tesla's "Gigafactory" is built.

[BTGBullseye]

Stairs are easy for the military four legged version, but that's because they designed it for extreme terrain. ASIMO wasn't mainly designed for going up/down stairs...

 

Batteries are the way to go, unless you want something extremely noisy and hot running in your android at all times.

[Seattleite]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the military doesn't have robots with legs.

 

I realise batteries are better. So you know, they still run HOT, but so do humans and if the exterior is soft (as it damn well should be) that's actually kinda pleasant. The only purpose of an engine would be an in-the-field recharge. Out in the middle of nowhere with your robotic friend/lover/child and his/her batteries run low? Get out some liqour (or whatever) and have them drink it. After burning the fuel, they'll have a good charge in their batteries and you can keep doing whatever you were doing.

[BTGBullseye]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigDog

 

BigDog is a dynamically stable quadruped robot created in 2005 by Boston Dynamics with Foster-Miller, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Harvard University Concord Field Station. Made for the US military.

[Vapymid]

And, incidentally, Boston Dynamics has been bought by Goggle

 

Regards

 

P.S. There is a thread about their robots here...