There is a continuum of robots, from automated to autonomous. We might envision a future where autonomous robots will operate all day, but this will not be possible for a very, very long time. The main hurdle is not intelligence but power requirements. So, for the foreseeable future, most of our robots will be machines of automation. Still, we will make a huge variety excelling at extremely narrowly defined tasks that humans don't want to do. For example, a weeding robot will be more efficient at its weeding job than any human, but it will not harvest the plants and it cannot assess the plants' need for fertilizer. Robots will also be a source of entertainment for humans. We will be riveted by robot dance and acrobatics, and we will continue to cheer battling bots. Although robots might be more efficient on wheels and large enough to carry enormous batteries, we will tend to design the ones that we live and work with at our own scale, reflecting some of our own interface so that we can more easily understand and interact with them. In spite of these planned similarities, robots will continue to be constrained by limitations that we cannot easily overcome. They will be different from us in many ways, and they will be better than us in certain very narrow ways, and that is their benefit.
This video on “The Future of Robots” was commissioned by China Mobile as part of an online course. It is one of 36 lecture videos. A version with Chinese subtitles is available at Citic Migu: [ Ссылка ]
A transcript of the lecture in English is available here: [ Ссылка ]
