The recent announcement of an upcomingTeslaBot, complete with a human form, "human-level hands" and a characteristically optimistic delivery date, has elicited a healthy serving of criticism.
Musk says that the robot will eventually be able to do things on its own. Boston Dynamics has spent more than a decade working on its Atlas platform, which is the most advanced humanoid robot ever created. While progress has been impressive, with Atlas running, jumping and even dancing in front of tens of millions of YouTube viewers, the company is quick to acknowledge that the robot is a long way from performing complex tasks autonomously.
A study published in the journal PLOS Biology in 2010 shows one of the best examples of robotic potential. Evolutionary models and fitness goals were conducted by the study's authors using physical robots with motors and sensors.
They concluded that the examples of experimental evolution with robots prove the power of evolution. In all of the cases, the robots initially behaved uncoordinatedly because their genomes had random values.
The study concluded that a few hundreds of generations of random mutations and selective reproduction were sufficient to promote the evolution of efficient behaviours in a wide range of environmental conditions.
The machines are still very much a work in progress, despite the release of more than 100 Everyday Robot prototypes to perform cleaning chores around the Google offices.
Progress versus perfection.
I think there is a chance that Musk could leapfrog the competition in the field of robotics, but he will need some help from the robots themselves. According to many experts in the evolutionary computation space, robots that are capable of complex tasks that require constant feedback are too complex for humans to design on their own. The future of robotic development and design could be a product of evolution that has the robots selecting which features are most useful for a specific outcome.
Evolutionary robotics is not a new concept. Alan Turing believed that the creation of intelligent machines would be too complex for human designers and that a better method might be introducingmutations andselective reproduction into the process. The tools needed to put the idea into action have only recently become available.
For the first time in modern history, we have all the necessary building blocks to facilitate evolutionary robotics: rapid prototyping and physical reproduction using 3D printing, neural networks for learning and training, improved battery life and cheaper materials and much more.
Artificial evolution has been used by NASA to develop antennas for satellites. Xenobots, which aretiny biological machines first designed in computer simulations using the techniques of evolutionary robotics, were unveiled by the University of Vermont and the University of Vermont in 2020.
These self-healing biological machines were built using frog stem cells, and they exhibited the ability to move and push the drugs they were intended to deliver.
Evolutionary versions of physical robots are still time-Consuming, partly because of the risk involved. A variety of robotic mistakes, like crossing a street in front of traffic, could put humans in danger.
There are many possibilities.
Musk is correct that his existing cars are simply robot on wheels, but it is a gross oversimplification. The self- learning necessary to navigate a complex world without direct supervision is not possible with a tesla. It's possible that he has a supercomputer, already advanced robots and a phenomenal team of experts, but it's not likely that he'll be able to deliver a humanoid robot in the near future.
It would take several hundred generations of evolution to create a robot that can operate on its own.
Think of security and recon, building safety inspections, code compliance, firefighting assistance, or even search and rescue assistance as useful real-world applications.
A tower of condominiums collapsed in Surfside, Florida, in June of 2021, killing close to 100 people. A great example of how drones can be used to perform more frequent and regular building and code inspections would be using cameras and sensors to inspect aging condo buildings from the top floor to the bottom. This could be done at a fraction of the cost.
Security and medical assistance are useful applications. Think of the tragedy in Houston. It can be difficult to cover large areas with security personnel at a 100,000 person event. A swarm of drones or robot swarms can be very helpful in this regard, monitoring for security issues, fights, people having seizures or other medical emergencies, and even bringing medical devices such as an automatic external defibrillator much faster than human staff could.
Why is a swarm of drones not a single one? There are a few reasons, but chiefly resilience and redundant. The operation continues if one of the drones fails. This is helpful for situations in which the mission cannot be stopped.
Creating better machines.
The term evolutionary robotics is misleading because it is about replicating processes learned from organic evolution to non-organic devices. A better description might be artificial evolution or embodied evolution. The processes that are creating an evolution are more important than the robots that are evolving.
The same approach could be applied to any entity that can be equipped with a neural network and evolutionary algorithms to create offspring from two or more parents. Evolution doesn't need a physical form to solve major problems. What can a better understanding of evolution do?
For one, real-world interactions. The only way to create robots that are capable of autonomously interacting is through evolutionary robotics. The benefits of such robots are too long to list, but use cases could range from robotic firefighters and search-and-rescuerobots to nuclear waste cleanuprobots, home carerobots and more.
We could learn more about organic evolution. A more nuanced knowledge of evolution could have broad applications. We could gain insights into the best ways to treat diseases and build immunities, improve our life spans, reduce our impact on the ecological world and gain a better grasp of our future on this planet.
Clues into life's origins could be obtained. By studying and mastering artificial evolution, we will be able to better understand how life could form and evolve on other planets. A better understanding of evolution and the ability to replicate macroevolution on a micro scale will undoubtedly help guide us in any search for extraterrestrial life.
A sword with two edges.
Think about a deeper exploration of our solar system. We could send missions deeper into space with fully self-replicating and evolving robots. The robots would be able to adapt to any planet they landed on and eventually send data or offspring back to Earth.
If the idea of a robot uprising conjures up images of a movie like "Terminator", you can take solace in the fact that a robot capable of learning, reproducing, observing and evolving is still a long way from reality.
The displacement of the human workforce is the biggest downside to mastering truly autonomously-piloted robots. Musk believes that work in the future will be optional and that the solution is universal basic income.
I am not sure if I agree. Humans derive a sense of self-worth and value from working and creating, and taking that away could have far-reaching psychological impacts. Evolutionary robotics could be one of the greatest achievements and biggest challenges humanity will have to face.
