Ackerman, Evan. “Toyota Research Demonstrates Ceiling-Mounted Home Robot.” IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News, 30 Sept. 2020, 20:48 GMT, spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/toyota-research-ceiling-mounted-home-robot.
Article title:
Toyota Research Demonstrates Ceiling-Mounted Home Robot
Photo: TRI
My summary of the article:
TRI, the Toyota Research Institute, focuses on augmenting human performance in household jobs by the use of home robots. The idea of household robots have not been very popular due to the unpredictability of how things are in homes. TRI, however, believes in the potential this industry as there is a growing number of people who may need additional help in their household jobs to carry on their independent lives (especially in Japan where the median age of the population is rising sharply).
The robot TRI is currently designing has two revolutionary details. The first one is the "soft bubble gripper" – air-filled grippers that uses sensors to analyze the pattern an object forms on the inside of the soft layer to perform tasks accordingly to the object's orientation. The other is the fact that the robot is "ceiling-mounted," like the character 'GLaDOS' that appears in a popular game 'Portal'. TRI mentions that although there are many advantages of having a ceiling-mounted position to robot's performance such as less load, safety, and movement freedom, it has been tried rarely in the past to provide robots with a human-like environment.
The aim of TRI is not to replace humans with robots. Rather, it is to enhance and amplify human performance in their jobs in order to enable humans to work more efficiently as if they are physically younger than their actual age.
My response to the article:
TRI's motto, or ideology, of "amplifying humans rather than replacing" is very appealing in a philanthropic sense. I relate this article to a common phenomenon I could experience in an everyday basis, whereby the number of part-time workers in restaurants and cafes are shrinking with the introduction of "digital staff". This is not necessarily a negative phenomenon in a society's perspective, since, after all, customers are happier due to increased convenience. However, this does also mean that the rate of employees losing their jobs due to "digital employees" will also increase with time. TRI's robots seem to have found a common ground between the two ideas by "enhancing", not "replacing", the work of people.
Will this state of cooperation be eternal? My answer is 'no', since the way I see it, it is inevitable for human work (especially those that require relatively less creativity) to be completely replaced by robots in the far (or near) future. Still, TRI's attempt to bring together the gap between the two entities – humans and robots – is of great value, since it may offer a way for humanity to thrive with the aid of robots, yet not being completely dependent on them (which may lead to an unpleasant future).
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