Creating Robots That Are More Like Humans

Technology has come a long way since robots were first introduced into the automotive industry more than 50 years ago. However, although robots can weld, paint and assemble car parts, they are still far from becoming equivalent to human workers, said Taskin Padir, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University. "The robots we have that are currently state-of-the-art do not come anywhere close to human capabilities, in terms of accuracy and control said Padir. "We still need to make significant improvements on that front." One of the biggest challenges is duplicating the extremely fine finger and hand motions humans can perform. Robots simply don't have the dexterity required to do tasks that are simple for humans, such as tie a knot, strip the casing off a cable, insert a pin in a hole or use a hand tool such as a drill, said Padir. In addition, today's robots lack perception of the world around them and the ability to adjust their actions if their environment changes. "We still needed to work quite a bit on a robot's perception so a robot can look at a tabletop and figure out OK, here is the screwdriver, here is the part that I am assembling, so I better pick up the screwdriver and start working on," said Padir. "Currently what we do is pre-program all of these actions in a sequence that a robot acts out.