The latest AI robots: Amazon’s Astro, robot dog Spot, the ‘cheap’ Stretch on show at US robot conference
- Some of the latest AI robots starred at We Robot 2022 in US, including Amazon’s Astro, Boston Dynamics’ Spot and Hello Robot’s Stretch
- But their limitations were clear – Astro struggled with glass walls, Spot needs to better traverse tough terrain, and Stretch… actually that worked just fine
The Hollywood version of artificial intelligence (AI) robots has given us the scary future depicted in the Terminator, Matrix and RoboCop movies.
But at a recent gathering of lawyers and roboticists at the University of Washington in the US, you could see the actual status of AI robots. They can get lost when manoeuvring, get tripped up when trying to climb up gravelly terrain and they’ve got big-time issues with multitasking.
Yes, robots are doing astounding things. Just not like in the movies.
But at the We Robot 2022 conference, now in its 11th year and attended by 170 participants from various parts of the world, they did have one eye on the problems the future might hold.
One paper presented was titled “K9 police robots: Strolling drones, RoboDogs or lethal weapons?”
That was from two German researchers. Might as well start discussing the ethics of androids before it is too late.