{"id":1574,"date":"2023-03-09T16:28:27","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T22:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/?p=1574"},"modified":"2023-04-18T16:22:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T21:22:17","slug":"real-robots-in-our-near-future-the-rise-of-capable-industrial-automatons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/real-robots-in-our-near-future-the-rise-of-capable-industrial-automatons\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Robots in Our Near Future: The Rise of Capable  Industrial Automatons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>We know two things about the future. And both point to the need for many more and very different kinds of robots than now exist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">We know that even as economies increasingly digitalize and become ever more service- and software- centric, demand will still increase for the kinds of things that are produced by the \u201chard\u201d industries. That reality was made clear during the disruptive lockdowns. Miners are needed to access minerals to supply the manufacturers that, in turn, fabricate physical stuff, from computer chips to medical devices, and from fertilizers to pharmaceuticals. All of that is critical for creating and operating all the services that make modern life possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also know, since \u201cdemography is destiny,\u201d that the world in general and the United States and Europe in particular will experience increasing shortages of skilled workers for all of the hard industries.<sup>i<\/sup>&nbsp;In today\u2019s America, the nearly 50-year-old average age of those in the skilled trades is far older than the overall population average.<sup>ii<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are only a few options for ensuring a sufficient supply of skilled labor needed for the hard industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The primary option, thus far, has been to find those people and industries elsewhere\u2014that is, the <em>de facto <\/em>policies of increasingly importing goods from other, younger nations. That option, if pushed too far, has its own geopolitical and economic challenges and is likely to face constraints now since many policymakers are embracing reshoring initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then there\u2019s the option of importing a younger labor pool. Setting aside the politics of immigration, it still takes a long time for any rising generation to develop the necessary skills and experience, even if the targets (whether natives or immigrants) have the requisite interest in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which brings us to the only other option, amplifying the effectiveness of those, of any age, with skills. Industrial automation is a longstanding solution for amplifying labor, whether by outright taking over some jobs to free up a human for higher-skill tasks or by increasing the productivity of the skilled person (faster, safer execution of tasks). However, contrary to the popular narrative, there is far less automation across industries than most imagine, especially when it comes to robots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surveys reveal that you won\u2019t find <em>any <\/em>industrial robots in over 90 percent of America\u2019s manufacturing enterprises.<sup>iii<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, there are millions of industrial robots in the world, but the majority are found in the minority of businesses and performing a small minority of the universe of tasks. Even for firms of significant size, over 500 employees, just half those have industrial robots. Today\u2019s robot population is found mainly in the big businesses that produce large quantities of similar products (especially automobiles). As the size of the firm shrinks, and the variety of tasks rises, the robot share shrinks faster. The skilled workforce and automation challenges for small business impact large businesses because the latter depend on supply chains of small firms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That automation yields more output per employee is intuitively obvious and borne out by the data.<sup>iv<\/sup>&nbsp;Fifty years ago, large firms with economies-of-scale achieved, on average, about 25 percent greater output per worker compared to small firms. But today, large- firm adoption of industrial automation has led to per- person output nearly double that of the small ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The dramatic automation schism between large and small firms is explained by a simple fact. Robots haven\u2019t yet been good enough to be deployed widely. Industrial robots, in the main, are used in a fixed location performing high-volume, repetitive tasks, well-suited to big manufacturers. Up until recently, there wasn\u2019t any prospect for finding robots that <strong><em>both <\/em><\/strong>match or exceed human performance <strong><em>and <\/em><\/strong>can also be reassigned to a new task. Both those metrics need to be met with robots that can work (safely) alongside people, instead of isolated and bolted down, or limited to fixed tracks. And, of course, costs matter, not just the purchase price, but the cost of integration which, so far, can double or triple the initial cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What hard industries need in the near future distills to affordable, useful anthropomorphic robots, ones with skills. Ones that can perambulate or at least easily roll around in the same environment as people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1><strong>Long Time Coming<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>For centuries, engineers have designed machines with embodied controls that can automatically react to a change. A simple example might be a tank that registers a filling liquid and reacts accordingly: Once the fluid level reaches a certain point, it flips a lever connected to a simple valve, stopping the flow. But far more clever mechanical automation than this dates back to ancient days. In the first century, Hero of Alexandria built automatic doors and the like, powered by compressed air or running water, and even steam. Hero also invented a coin-operated drink- dispenser, as well as animated puppets controlled by ropes connected to weights, amongst dozens of other ingenious, automatic machines.<sup>v<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The idea of an automaton itself, a robot, is also old. We can trace the idea of an automaton to a time before Hero of Alexandria, to 250 BC in the epic Greek myth of \u201cArgonautica,\u201d (to become Hollywoodified as \u201cJason and the Argonauts\u201d) wherein Apollonius imagined a giant, man-like bronze robot called Talos.<sup>vi<\/sup><em>&nbsp;<\/em>For the 20 centuries that have followed, robots have been a staple in fiction, usually of the dystopian variety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"508\" height=\"552\" src=\"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/2-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1594\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/2-1.png 508w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/2-1-276x300.png 276w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/2-1-150x163.png 150w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/2-1-300x326.png 300w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/2-1-387x420.png 387w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 508px) 100vw, 508px\" \/><figcaption><em>Boston Dynamic\u2019s Atlas robot that can perform sophisticated movements, including running, jumping, throwing<\/em> <em>heavy objects and even doing backflips.<\/em> <em>At 5 feet tall and 190 pounds, Atlas is a battery powered, hydraulically actuated humanoid with RGB cameras, a laser rangefinder and<\/em> <em>depth sensors, all of which feed data to powerful computers operating complex algorithms. Atlas displays fine motor skills and can operate in rough terrain, with a wide range of capabilities including<\/em> <em>tasks in dangerous environments.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>When Czech playwright Karel \u010capek wrote his 1920 play, \u201cRossum\u2019s Universal Robots<em>,<\/em>\u201d he imagined automatons replacing humans for manual labor. \u010capek invented the word \u201crobot\u201d from the Czech \u201crobota,\u201d which translates as forced labor or drudgery. Even though the word is now used rather elastically to include everything from an automated pick-and-place machine to a clothes washer, what we really mean by \u201crobot\u201d is a truly autonomous, ambulatory machine, and one that can be anthropomorphic\u2014even human- like in appearance and mechanical function.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1939, Westinghouse built a kind of \u201cWizard of Oz\u201d Tin Man, a stunt robot for the New York World\u2019s Fair. But it could only walk stiffly and had a recorded voice that would say: \u201cMy brain is bigger than yours.\u201d (Westinghouse wanted to show off its automated switchgear used for electrical grid controls.) More famously, it was the scientist-turned-writer Isaac Asimov who created the modern archetype for robots in his iconic 1950 science fiction book, <em>I, Robot<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A key feature of an ambulatory general- purpose robot is that it can navigate in the same environments as people. Over recent decades, there have been myriad pretenders in the race to produce a real robot, from Sony\u2019s toy robodog circa 2000 (while looking dog-like, it was not close to being able to emulate animal ambulation) to Honda\u2019s contemporaneous walking and stair-climbing Asimo, to name only two amongst dozens.<sup>vii<\/sup>&nbsp;All were engineering demonstrations or toys. Few could perform functions other than walk or dance awkwardly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in the past few years\u2014because of radical innovations in sensors, AI, materials and batteries\u2014 engineers are finally building anthropomorphic robots, even if most are not yet commercially viable. With remarkable prescience, for the occasion of the 1964 World\u2019s Fair, Asimov made some forecasts, amongst which he wrote that \u201crobots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.\u201d<sup>viii<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We know what Asimov was referring to with robots: the difference that distinguishes automation and automatons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Boston Dynamics human-like Atlas robot meets that definition of an automaton, a true anthropomorphic robot. But it\u2019s not commercially available and is rumored to cost about $1 million.<sup>ix<\/sup>&nbsp;Nonetheless, Atlas has demonstrated human-like running, jumping, back-flipping and autonomous navigation. Atlas\u2019s prowess vastly exceeded the best efforts of the teams that competed only as recently as 2015 in a DARPA (the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Grand Challenge. The contest involved simply having an untethered robot perform easy tasks of ascending a staircase, opening a door and turning a valve\u2014all tasks inherent to operating usefully within a typical human environment, and all previously beyond the capabilities of any general-purpose robot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In early 2020, Boston Dynamics offered for commercial sale (base price at $74,500) its autonomous, ambulatory four-legged automaton, Spot.<sup>x<\/sup>&nbsp;That such robots are now being offered for sale is more than mere curiosity. It is a pivot in history comparable to the first automobile, the 1896 horse- carriage-looking Duryea Wagon which was, in its day, magical because it was self-propelled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"309\" height=\"503\" src=\"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/3-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1595\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/3-1.png 309w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/3-1-184x300.png 184w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/3-1-150x244.png 150w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/3-1-300x488.png 300w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/3-1-258x420.png 258w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 309px) 100vw, 309px\" \/><figcaption><em>Above is the poster for the 1939 production of the Czech play \u201cR.U.R.: Rossum\u2019s Universal Robots,\u201d which was performed in New York City as a Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal<\/em> <em>program to help sustain artists during the Great Depression.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Spot can walk, run and get up after falling, open doors and fetch objects. Spot, at least initially, is being hired for such things as roaming safety surveillance at construction sites, on farms, offshore oil platforms, pharmaceutical factories. Such services are critical not just for confirming that equipment is operating optimally but also for safety. Such tasks are by nature inherently repetitive and often become the kind of drudgery that lends itself to error and oversight. And freeing people from those tasks makes them available for upskilling; it amplifies human labor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are today at least two dozen companies designing and building pre-commercial anthropomorphic robots, ranging from start-ups to industrial giants such as Toyota and Hyundai. And, last year Elon Musk announced that Tesla would soon commercialize a walking robot called Optimus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1><strong>Useful Biomimicry<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>As with the automobile, the (true) robot is made possible by the confluence of a suite of technologies. For the age of the car to launch, it took the independent maturation of high-strength steel, internal combustion and oil refining. For robots, it\u2019s the arrival of powerful micro-motors, vision \u201cchips,\u201d enabled by AI, and lithium batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Advances in the suite of sensors, vision and location systems have followed a progression similar to the often-noted Moore\u2019s Law for computer chips. Roboticists now have available an array of tiny, powerful cameras, chip-scale radar, complementary laser-based radar (i.e., lidar), along with microscopic silicon-fabricated position sensors. Tools that can sense motion, direction and velocity\u2014from inertial changes in movement, hence the technical term, inertial measurement unit, or IMU\u2014have been used by the military, in particular, for decades. But only in the past two decades has the IMU collapsed from coffee-cup scale to chip-scale, and only in the past decade gained both sufficient precision and affordability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Practical, tetherless robots also needed a revolution in power, both in the ability to store onboard power and the power of actuators to effect movements and manipulations with precision and, well, power. The first commercial lithium battery, a game-changer, didn\u2019t appear until the early 1990s, and it took another decade or two for that ecosystem to achieve the requisite maturity. Similarly, actuators\u2014in effect, robots\u2019 muscles\u2014followed another, again independent trajectory of (fortuitous) advances in size and more power. Superior designs and new materials\u2014not least the 1984 invention of rare-earth neodymium super- magnets\u2014has engendered a roughly 50-fold gain in the power-to-weight ratio for tiny electric motors over the past several decades.<sup>xi<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The challenge that has eluded engineers for years is a mechanical and materials science one: the ability to mimic animal or human muscles. When it comes to biomimicry, the challenge has always been to find a way to use available electrical, pneumatic or polymer actuators to attempt to approach the combination of capabilities exhibited by muscles, the biological actuators: high energy conversion efficiency, a large range of motion, a strong power-to-weight ratio, durability and, ideally, self-repair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a 1983 paper titled \u201cThe Muscle as an Engine,\u201d American physicist and polymath Edwin Jaynes presciently mapped out the mechanisms and the possibilities that were then not possible.<sup>xii<\/sup>&nbsp;Jaynes observed that ultra-efficient conversion of chemical into mechanical energy would ultimately require emulating how muscles operated\u2014that is, \u201cthat the moving parts receiving the primary energy be of molecular size.\u201d He speculated that \u201cfar from being impossible,\u201d that in time the design of \u201cuseful anti- Carnot molecular engines (artificial muscles) might become about as systematic and well understood as the design of drugs and antibiotics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today we\u2019re beginning to realize Jayne\u2019s vision with the profound, if ignored, revolution in materials sciences. The technical literature is replete with successful designs of \u201cartificial muscles,\u201d some engineered at the molecular level and in some cases with self-healing capability.<sup>xiii<\/sup>&nbsp;It has been a happy coincidence that materials sciences have enabled not only light-weight, durable construction of a frame (the skeleton), but also the design of actuators that have sufficient power- to-weight ratios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a key indicator of progress with biomimicry, robots are now, for the first time, able to move\u2014even if most are still pre-commercial\u2014at the same speed as the animals they mimic. Measured in terms of body-lengths-per-second (blps), Boston Dynamics, for example, has demonstrated a robo-Cheetah that approached the 16 blps speed of a biological cheetah. But just as aircraft can do things birds cannot, robots will be able to do the biologically impossible, such as converting in real time from, say, a rolling machine to a walking machine in order to adapt to terrain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A couple of decades ago, it would have required a room-sized computer to process, in real time, all the data generated by all those actuators and sensors. Of course, not only has compute power increased to allow on-board capability, but high-bandwidth local wireless networks have enabled remote access to even more powerful computation when needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Standard engineering progression will soon take us from Spot to the Atlas-class robots for commercial use as technology improves and costs come down. It\u2019s the trajectory seen after every irruption. The emergence of general-purpose robots will echo the pattern of the rise of the general-purpose transportation machine, the automobile. In the world of cyber-physical machines, the timespans between invention and commercial products are remarkably similar across categories and modern history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1><strong>Disrupting the Status Quo<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>It was in 1901 that one of the first cars was offered for sale signaling that commercial viability was possible. It was a Packard with a then-revolutionary steering wheel, instead of a tiller-like control (the design used since the 15-year earlier first invention of a car). And more critically, the Packard demonstrated the impressive feat of reliably completing a five-day, 300- mile drive. It sold for $1,500, which was then about 120 percent of an average annual wage. We note that Spot\u2019s selling price is about 120 percent of today\u2019s average annual wage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In late 2021, DARPA held its \u201csubterranean challenge\u201d in which teams competed using wheeled, tracked or walking robots that competed to (successfully) perform mining-related tasks in a network of caverns.<sup>xiv<\/sup>&nbsp;One of the contestants, for example, demonstrated the ability for its robots to survey and build out a detailed subterranean map in just one hour, a task that normally entails 100 person-hours of human surveyors to achieve the same precision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"718\" height=\"454\" src=\"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/4-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1596\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/4-1.png 718w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/4-1-300x190.png 300w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/4-1-600x379.png 600w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/4-1-150x95.png 150w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/4-1-696x440.png 696w, https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2023\/03\/4-1-664x420.png 664w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 718px) 100vw, 718px\" \/><figcaption>Spot can carry and power up to 14kg of inspectio equipment. It can be controlled remotely or programmed for autonomous missions.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>While industrial applications for mobile robots are starting mainly with survey and safety work, a proliferation of vendors has pre-commercial machines capable of working alongside, sometimes replacing, humans in heavy-lift tasks. The warehouse \u201clogistics\u201d markets have become a hotbed for both development and deployment of robots, many to undertake the same kinds of lifting tasks needed across industries. Last year, Boston Dynamics, to note one example, introduced a box-handling robot that can finally match the 800 box-per-hour rate at which humans unload a truck.<sup>xv<\/sup>&nbsp;It can move boxes up to 50 pounds and only needs to take a break every 16 hours (to recharge).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the coming decade, far more robots are expected to be hired by warehouse operators than in all other applications combined. Within five years, overall spending on automation in warehouses is forecast to be more than double last year\u2019s $16 billion, compared to a 60 percent spending increase over the past five years.<sup>xvi<\/sup>&nbsp;Given the close alignment in tasks and performance metrics, all that commercialization is bound to accelerate robot capabilities for the adjacent industrial market. The population of the total robot workforce in industries and services is expected to increase 400 percent by 2030.<sup>xvii<\/sup>&nbsp;Odds are good that\u2019s an underestimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The automaton is a class of machine that holds as much promise for disruption (and for fortunes) as did the advent of the automobile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The value of an anthropomorphic robot, outside of entertainment, arises from the fact that the utility of such a machine increases the more easily it can operate in the environs that humans normally occupy\u2014as &nbsp;opposed to specialized environments, such as warehouses or factory-floors designed for most automatons so far. It\u2019s not only about having machines that amplify human capabilities, but also doing so by accommodating humans, rather than forcing humans to accommodate machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The automaton is a class of machine that holds as much promise for disruption (and for fortunes) as did the advent of the automobile. And it is a class of machine that, more than any other, has excited the dystopian anxieties of doomsayers, particularly those predicting the destruction of all work as we know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The anxieties and complaints are similar in character to those voiced by early critics of the automobile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many bemoaned that road infrastructures changed the landscape, that cars disrupted social norms, that they took jobs from ranchers and horse handlers, etc.<sup>xviii&nbsp;<\/sup>Today we find a similar industry of pundits who compete to more loudly decry the consequences of robotification. In his masterpiece <em>Pneumatica<\/em>, Hero wrote, <em>circa <\/em>50 AD, that while some people back then thought his automatons could \u201csupply the most pressing wants of human life,\u201d for others they engendered \u201calarm.\u201d<sup>xix<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fundamentally, the labor-productivity boost that robotification will bring promises to echo precisely what happened a century ago with the mechanization of industry. More businesses, more services, new kinds of jobs replacing old ones, and more wealth and well-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In thinking about our near future, Steffi Paepcke, a senior designer on the robot team at Toyota\u2019s research institute, perceptively observed the modern relevance of the apocryphal quote attributed to Henry Ford: \u201cIf the inventors of the automobile had asked people riding horses what they wanted, they would have answered that they just wanted a faster horse. It can be difficult to imagine a future that\u2019s vastly different from the status quo.\u201d<sup>xx<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Amen. \uf0aa<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n\n\n\n<h2>References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>i<\/sup> <a href=\"https:\/\/www\">https:\/\/www<\/a>.barr<a href=\"http:\/\/www.barrypopik.com\/index.php\/new_york_city\/entry\/demography_\">ypopik.com\/index.php\/ne<\/a>w_y<a href=\"http:\/\/www.barrypopik.com\/index.php\/new_york_city\/entry\/demography_\">ork_city\/entry\/demography_<\/a> is_destiny<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>ii<\/sup> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/tradesman-jobs\/demographics\/\">https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/tradesman-jobs\/demographics\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>iii<\/sup> https:\/\/mit-serc.pubpub.org\/pub\/puzzle-of-missing-robots\/release\/1<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>iv<\/sup> https:\/\/mit-serc.pubpub.org\/pub\/puzzle-of-missing-robots\/release\/1<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>v<\/sup> Woodcroft, Bennet. <em>Pneumatica: The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria<\/em>. New York, NY: Oia Press, 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>vi<\/sup> Mayor, Adrienne. <em>Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. <\/em>Lawrenceville: Princeton University Press, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>vii<\/sup> Nocks, Lisa. \u201c500 Years of Humanoid Robots Automata Have Been Around Longer Than You Think.\u201d <em>IEEE Spectrum 54<\/em>, no. 10 (2017): 18\u201319. https:\/\/doi. org\/10.1109\/mspec.2017.8048830<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>viii<\/sup> Asimov, Isaac. \u201cVisit to the World\u2019s Fair of 2014,\u201d New York Times, August 16, 1964. https:\/\/archiv<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/\">e.nytimes.com\/www<\/a>.nytimes.com\/ books\/97\/03\/23\/lifetimes\/asi-v-fair.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>ix<\/sup> \u201cAtlas.\u201d Boston Dynamics. Accessed April 12, 2021. <a href=\"http:\/\/www\/\">https:\/\/www<\/a>. bostondynamics.com\/atlas<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>x<\/sup> Mogg, Trevor. \u201cSpot the Robot Dog Is Amazing, and Look How Far It\u2019s Come.\u201d Digital Trends, June 17, 2020. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.digitaltrends.com\/news\/\">https:\/\/www.digitaltrends.com\/ne<\/a>ws\/ spot-the-robot-dog-is-amazing-but-look-how-far-its-come\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>xi<\/sup> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/journal\/actuators\">https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/journal\/actuators<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>xii<\/sup> Jaynes, E.T. Rep. <em>The Muscle as an Engine<\/em>. Cambridge, 1983.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>xiii<\/sup> Bourzac, Katherine. \u201cA Super-Stretchy Self-Healing Artificial Muscle.\u201d IEEE Spectrum, April 18, 2016. https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tech-talk\/robotics\/robotics- hardware\/a-superstretch-selfhealing-artificial-muscle<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>xiv<\/sup> https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/darpa-subterranean-challenge-2657170650<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>xv<\/sup> https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/warehouse-robot<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>xvi<\/sup> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/1094202\/global-warehouse-automation-\">https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/1094202\/global-warehouse-automation-<\/a> market-size\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>xvii<\/sup> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.electronicproducts.com\/mobile-robotics-from-amrs-to-\">https:\/\/www<\/a>.electr<a href=\"http:\/\/www.electronicproducts.com\/mobile-robotics-from-amrs-to-\">onicproducts.com\/mobile-robotics-from-amrs-to-<\/a> quadrupeds\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>xviii<\/sup> Ladd, Brian. <em>Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age<\/em>. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>xix<\/sup> Crawford, James. \u201cThe Life and Death of the Library of Alexandria.\u201d Literary Hub, March 13, 2017. https:\/\/lithub.com\/the-life-and-death-of-the- library-of-alexandria\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>xx<\/sup> McBurnett, Marie. \u201cDesigning Robots for Ikigai.\u201d StackPath, October 1, 2020. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.machinedesign.com\/markets\/robotics\/article\/21143565\/\">https:\/\/www.machinedesign.com\/mar<\/a>kets\/r<a href=\"http:\/\/www.machinedesign.com\/markets\/robotics\/article\/21143565\/\">obotics\/article\/21143565\/<\/a> designing-robots-for-ikigai<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We know two things about the future. And both point to the need for many more and very different kinds of robots than now exist. We know that even as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":1592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21,28,19,283,20,4,232,222,25,522,281,220,234,284,223,221,22,218,282,23],"tags":[456,304,448,455,464,472,451,462,460,461,468,449,450,470,467,454,463,473,466,452,445,459,453,458,469,471,311,447,465,446,457],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1574"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2021,"href":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions\/2021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dda.ndus.edu\/ddreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}