Robohub.org
 

The sci-fi myth of robotic competence | Popular Science


by
21 May 2014



share this:

See on Scoop.itCultibotics

“The myth of robotic competence is based on a hunch. And it’s a hunch that, for the most part, has been proven dead wrong by real-life robots. Actual robots are devices of extremely narrow value and capability. They do one or two things with competence, and everything else terribly, or not at all. Auto-assembly bots can paint or spot-weld a vehicle in a fraction of the time that a human crew might require, and with none of the health concerns. … But ask them to install upholstery, and they would most likely bash the vehicle to pieces.”

See on www.popsci.com




John Payne





Related posts :



Human-robot interaction design retreat

  25 Nov 2025
Find out more about an event exploring design for human-robot interaction.

Robot Talk Episode 134 – Robotics as a hobby, with Kevin McAleer

  21 Nov 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Kevin McAleer from kevsrobots about how to get started building robots at home.

ACM SIGAI Autonomous Agents Award 2026 open for nominations

  19 Nov 2025
Nominations are solicited for the 2026 ACM SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award.

Robot Talk Episode 133 – Creating sociable robot collaborators, with Heather Knight

  14 Nov 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Heather Knight from Oregon State University about applying methods from the performing arts to robotics.

CoRL2025 – RobustDexGrasp: dexterous robot hand grasping of nearly any object

  11 Nov 2025
A new reinforcement learning framework enables dexterous robot hands to grasp diverse objects with human-like robustness and adaptability—using only a single camera.

Robot Talk Episode 132 – Collaborating with industrial robots, with Anthony Jules

  07 Nov 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Anthony Jules from Robust.AI about their autonomous warehouse robots that work alongside humans.



 

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