The emergence of humanlike robots

Humanoids are robots that have a somewhat human appearance, with a general shape that includes eyes, head, hands, and legs.

For instance, they look like astronauts with a helmet-shaped head. Roboticists who make such robots do not go through a lot of hardship since these require easier algorithm and not complex compared to completely humanlike machines.

The following are the terms used to identify robotic machines with human features:

Zombie (Android): It was a science fiction creature mostly a robot that looks like a human male.

Anthropomorphic machine: A machine that has the attributes of human characteristic.

Automaton: A mechanical human being.

Cyborg (Bionic human): A human with mixture of organic and mechanical components.

Fembot (Gynoid, Feminoid): A robot that looks like human female.

Human assistive devices: Prosthetic, exoskeleton, and walking chairs using two legs.

Humanlike robot: Artificial human, synthetic human or robots that look very much like human beings.

Humanoid: It is an intelligent mechanical human or a robot with human characteristics such as head, torso, hands, and legs but no detailed facial features.

The humanlike robots are barely distinguishable from real human beings because roboticists make every effort to bring robots very close to human appearance and behaviour. Mostly, these kinds of humanlike robots are from Korea, Japan and China with a few in the USA. These robots are becoming more useful and capable and probably in some years to come they will become our household appliances or peers and we could use them to perform complex and difficult tasks to replace unskilled human labourers.

Nevertheless, humanlike machines may raise fear and panic or even dislike as the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori predicted in 1970. This is because the degree of similarity between human beings and robots is increasing and at first it will be exciting with the progressive pattern but as similarity gets close it will turn to dislike and rejection. When the similarities reach an even higher level the attitude towards these humanoids will turn to liking once again. Apart from attitudinal issues rising towards the robots, we can look at ethical questions and concerns which will raise debates and unanswered questions: Will the humanlike robots hurt us or complicate our lives? Do you think the robots equipped will be helpful or probably turn against us humans who even made them? We might as well take a look at how realistic we want these machines to be and any upcoming potential dangers in our pursuit to reach humanlike robots. We must look at these points critically including how much these humanlike robots influence our lives, cause injury, and how we can prevent accidents or usage in committing crimes. I wonder what would happen if humanoids take on specific and unique roles such as serving as clones for specific human beings and robots getting access to personal information, assets which can be released to the public or people with bad intentions.

Today, some companies choose to lay off a thousand workers to replace them with less than a hundred robots to do the same job. Hence, increase in unemployment in such countries. I hope we have a limit to the extent at which robots are emerging as humanlike.

By Joshua Anquandah
Email: [email protected]