ETH research shows: This is why robots are (still) inferior to humans

Robots are still inferior to humans. Researchers from ETH Zurich come to this conclusion in a new study. Therefore, no humanoid robot can outperform humans in multiple tasks. But robots are catching up.

“For example, there is a robot called Cheetah that can jog faster than humans. But it has a high energy consumption and when it comes to sprinting, people are still faster,” says Robert Riener of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich).

Together with two other researchers, Riener looked for the best robots and compared them with humans. The result was published on Tuesday in the journal ‘Frontiers in Robotics and AI’.

The researchers focused on so-called humanoid, that is, human-like robots. The robots were compared based on functions such as locomotion and their underlying structures, such as muscles or motors.

For Riener, the surprising thing about the comparison results was not that robots are no match for humans. “I was surprised that the individual technical components are already better than those of humans,” says Riener. This is how cameras beat eyes, microphones beat ears and motors beat muscles.

“Apparently we have not yet managed to put these parts together in such a way that a robot functions better than humans in terms of movement and perception functions,” says Riener.

According to Riener’s estimation, the inferiority of robots will not last long. “Two years ago I thought it would take forever for robots to outperform humans,” says Riener. “But I now believe we will be ready for it in the near future.”

According to Riener, this is a huge opportunity. “Undignified and sometimes dangerous work in industry could be taken over by robots, and robots could support healthcare workers,” Riener said. As long as robots are used correctly, the researcher does not see them as a threat.

(dsc/sda)