Robohub.org
 

Robot Talk Episode 126 – Why are we building humanoid robots?


by
20 June 2025



share this:

Research into humanoid robots is a rapidly advancing field, with companies around the world striving to produce robots that look and act more like us. But what is it about recreating ourselves in robot form that we find so captivating? Why do humanoid robots both enthral and terrify us? And is our obsession with robotic humans just vanity, or could they play valuable roles in our future society?

In this special live recording at Imperial College London as part of the Great Exhibition Road Festival, Claire chatted to Ben Russell (Science Museum), Maryam Banitalebi Dehkordi (University of Hertfordshire) and Petar Kormushev (Imperial College London) about humanoid robotics.

Ben Russell has been the Science Museum’s Curator of Mechanical Engineering since 2004. He has curated six permanent galleries and temporary exhibitions at the museum, including Engineers (2023), Robots (2017), Cosmonauts (2015) and James Watt’s Workshop (2011). He is the author of James Watt: Making the World Anew, (Reaktion Books, 2014), and editor of Robots (Scala, 2017), as well as numerous published and conference papers.

Maryam Banitalebi Dehkordi is a Senior Lecturer in Robotics and AI at the University of Hertfordshire. She has a master’s degree in Mechatronics and Automatic Control Engineering from the University Technology Malaysia and a Ph.D. in Perceptual Robotics from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy. Her expertise spans assistive robots, mobile robots, agricultural robots, industrial robots, humanoid robots, parallel manipulators, navigation, and outdoor autonomous vehicles.

Petar Kormushev is Director of the Robot Intelligence Lab at Imperial College London and an Associate Professor in Robotics at the Dyson School of Design Engineering. His research focus is on reinforcement learning algorithms and their application to autonomous robots. Petar’s long-term goal is to create robots that can learn by themselves and adapt to dynamic environments. His machine learning algorithms have been applied to a variety of humanoid robots, including COMAN and iCub.




Robot Talk is a weekly podcast that explores the exciting world of robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous machines.
Robot Talk is a weekly podcast that explores the exciting world of robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous machines.





Related posts :



Drones and Droids: a co-operative strategy game

  22 Sep 2025
Scottish Association for Marine Science is running a crowdfunding campaign for educational card game.

Call for AAAI educational AI videos

  22 Sep 2025
Submit your contributions by 30 November 2025.

Self-supervised learning for soccer ball detection and beyond: interview with winners of the RoboCup 2025 best paper award

  19 Sep 2025
Method for improving ball detection can also be applied in other fields, such as precision farming.

#ICML2025 outstanding position paper: Interview with Jaeho Kim on addressing the problems with conference reviewing

  15 Sep 2025
Jaeho argues that the AI conference peer review crisis demands author feedback and reviewer rewards.

Apertus: a fully open, transparent, multilingual language model

  11 Sep 2025
EPFL, ETH Zurich and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) released Apertus today, Switzerland’s first large-scale, open, multilingual language model.

Robots to the rescue: miniature robots offer new hope for search and rescue operations

  09 Sep 2025
Small two-wheeled robots, equipped with high-tech sensors, will help to find survivors faster in the aftermath of disasters.

#IJCAI2025 distinguished paper: Combining MORL with restraining bolts to learn normative behaviour

and   04 Sep 2025
The authors introduce a framework for guiding reinforcement learning agents to comply with social, legal, and ethical norms.

Researchers are teaching robots to walk on Mars from the sand of New Mexico

  02 Sep 2025
Researchers are closer to equipping a dog-like robot to conduct science on the surface of Mars



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence