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I think there's plenty of room for more robotics in the real world today. No C3-PO yet (which was technically a walking google translate), but even something like this robot making food (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv7VUqPE8AE) could be useful in the real world. There's no reason with the progress I've seen in OpenCV and point cloud tech that we couldn't make robots that could stock store shelves, serve food, lay tile, etc. The largest impediments I've seen would be the insane cost (often over $100k), and how slow they are (maybe because of processor speed?).

Universal robots has a robot that can lift 10 Kg; on par with a person.



The machine in the video you linked to is neat but it actually serves to illustrate my point. Move the ingredient dispensers a few centimeters in any direction, change the cooking plate temperature and watch what happens. This machine is simply playing back a programmed set of motions. The fact that it looks complex and anthropomorphic does not make it intelligent. Any FIRST Robotics League team in the US could build a machine to do this for a lot less money.

When I had my own electronics manufacturing operations in house I always looked for opportunities to add robotics to improve the process. In almost every instance it was far more efficient to add a custom or semi-custom single-purpose tool than to even attempt to use a programmed manipulator of any kind. The combination of a person with a set of custom tools can be very efficient. Now, of course, I never did mass production. That's an entirely different game. Even then, you'll see programmed machines do tasks like dispense adhesives or gasket material. In nearly all cases an indexing fixture carefully aligns the workpiece and the robot/machine executes a canned motion cycle. These machines are not intelligent at all. They might appear to be, but they are not.




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