In recent years, humanoid robots have made significant advances thanks to artificial intelligence and are making significant changes in the labor market and global economy. This issue has caused the investment in the field of humanoid robots to increase significantly. The unprecedented reception of chatbot ChatGPT sent the important message to the world that artificial intelligence services are growing at an astonishing rate and will soon change office-based industries. To be more precise, in the not-so-distant future, artificial intelligence will go to a part of white-collar workers, or more precisely, salaried workers who do professional or semi-professional office work such as management, sales, etc. Interestingly, artificial intelligence will significantly improve productivity in this area. This issue has made many people believe that artificial intelligence will be the main reason for their unemployment. If you're fresh out of college and looking for the perfect job, you should know that jobs that involve physical activity are more promising than jobs that people do behind desks.

The entry of humanoid robots into the world of humans

Some activists in the technology world believe that humanoid robots will arrive sooner than expected. Robots that rely on artificial intelligence can quickly learn new things and use the key features of generative artificial intelligence models such as GPT. Thanks to the vast collection of data available on the Internet, these humanoid robots will learn various tips and will be useful in doing some tasks. Humanoid robots will initially enter the world of employment as simple trainees, but over time they will learn new things very quickly and will use what they have learned in different ways. To understand this issue, it is enough to take a look at the developments of artificial intelligence and smart models that various companies have launched in the market in the last few months.

Humanoid robots could be available 7 days a week full-time and be capable enough to replace humans in the future. These robots significantly reduce labor and production costs and improve productivity. One of the best and most famous humanoid robots ever made is called Atlas (Figure 1). This robot is a product of Boston Dynamics company, which has made significant improvements in the last decade and has added good functionality, but it is still known as a research project.

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Mark Reibert, the founder of Boston Dynamics, said: "We are in no rush to mass produce humanoid robots."

In an interview with IEE Spectrum in 2022, he said: "We should not put unnecessary pressure on specialists to produce a reliable, flexible and cheap product in the short term. The construction of humanoid robots is an important issue, so the construction process must be examined from different angles and we must always take steps in the direction of using new technologies. The proposal I made to [parent company] Hyundai Motor was clearly this, and I allocated a considerable budget so that if the design process takes time, the specialists will not have a problem in this area and they can focus on their work."

Hanson Robotics and Engineered Arts companies have also focused on better interaction between humans and robots and have gone to the production of humanoid robots such as Sophia and Ameca. These robots have a human-like face with the ability to express emotions (Figure 2). For example, Ameca has the ability to communicate with humans through the ChatGPT language model.

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Other companies are also trying to produce humanoid robots in a short time and on a mass scale. Elon Musk announced in 2021 that Tesla plans to enter the market of humanoid robots. Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot has made great strides since its initial unveiling, but it's still a long way from becoming a commercially viable product. Elon Musk says: "In the long run, Tesla's robotics business will be more profitable and more valuable than the car business."

Brett Adcock, the founder of the online talent search website Vettery and the company Archer Aviation, announced in early 2023 that his newest business will be dedicated to the process of building and developing humanoid robots. The first stage of the new Figure company's big plan is to build an electromechanical humanoid robot that has capabilities close to humans. This company eventually plans to mass produce humanoid robots and enter the market.

More specifically, Figure plans to market the world's first general-purpose commercial humanoid robot, currently called Figure 01 (Figure 3). This robot is 168 cm tall and weighs 60 kg and has the ability to carry a load of 20 kg and walks at a speed of 4.3 km/h. This robot can work up to five hours with a single charge. Figure 1, as a bipedal robot can climb stairs, walk and be active in many environments where humans are present. This robot is made with hands and physical structure similar to the human body and is able to use the tools that humans use and therefore has the ability to do some human tasks.

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Adcock is working on the humanoid robot project with great speed. After its establishment, Archer company attracted a number of top specialists from competing companies and in a short time achieved significant progress in the field of technical issues and attracting capital. Archer is currently the third-largest eVTOL company in the world by funding. This company has announced that it will mass produce its flying car by 2025, at the same time as Joby Aviation. Joby Aviation was founded in 2009, while Acher started operating in this field in 2020.

It seems that the startup Figure also has a similar policy. This company had more than 40 engineers at the beginning of its establishment. These people were experts from companies like Boston Dynamics, Google Waymo, and even the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Perception who joined Figure. Figure has not yet designed a significant product, but it is going through the process of development and research at a high speed. It is written on the website of this company that we are on the path to success with high risk and very little chance; If we succeed, we will mark a new era in the history of mankind and in this way we will become the largest company in the world of technology.

OpenAI is doubly interested in building humanoid robots

In this connection, the OpenAI organization, the creator of ChatGPT, has also announced that it is interested in building humanoid robots. OpenAI seeks to produce artificial general intelligence (Artificial General Intelligence). General artificial intelligence can do almost all tasks better than humans and can reason and make decisions independently.

OpenAI tries to solve many of the prerequisites for achieving general artificial intelligence based on the ChatGPT language model. However, general artificial intelligence can only be used in the form of a humanoid robot. For several years, OpenAI has had a commercial and research unit in the field of robotics, and has even done work on building humanoid robots that are based on neural networks. For example, this company's robotic arm was able to solve the Rubik's cube in the shortest time.

However, the robotics unit of this organization was shut down in 2021 to focus on the field of generative artificial intelligence and language models such as ChatGPT. The main difference between these two areas is data and processing power. Intelligent robots can learn physical tasks very well, however, textual data is more abundant than video data needed to train robots. Also, neural models analyze and process texts faster.

In this regard, OpenAI decided to focus on text and eventually achieved significant success. OpenAI now owns the fastest growing infrastructure in history. ChatGPT has made a big revolution in the world of technology from any angle. OpenAI plans to double back into the field of robotics by investing in a Norwegian company called 1X, known as Halodi Robotics. Few details about the OpenAI and 1X collaboration have been released at this time. 1X announced a few weeks ago that it had raised about $23.5 million in funding. A significant part of this budget was provided by OpenAI.

It is necessary to explain that Halodi Robotics has been able to achieve interesting improvements with the Eve robot. This company has succeeded in making a humanoid robot that uses wheels instead of legs. The wheeled robot has more limited functionality than the bipedal robot, and for this reason, Halodi Robotics has focused on building a bipedal robot named Neo. The company seeks to investigate how artificial intelligence can be used in a human-like body. The Halodi robot has a screen on its face and is equipped with human-like hands. This is the only information that Halodi has released about its robot and has not mentioned more details. But he said that he will publish more news in this field in the summer of 2023. Many robotics enthusiasts are eager to see a robot that OpenAI will play an important role in its production.

last words:

The field of humanoid robots has a high capacity to make the next big change in the world of technology and industry. As Tesla and Figure have said, a company that can market a versatile humanoid robot before the rest will find a better and higher position than the competition and achieve huge profitability. In addition, the cost of using a robotic worker is much cheaper than human workers. The robotic worker does not need insurance and leave and can perform a large number of tasks alone. The combination of these factors show that the revolution of humanoid robots can bring many benefits, but at the same time, it will also bring risks. For various reasons, humans are not able to do everything in the best way, so it is logical to go to the construction of robotic superhumans that have more speed and power, do various tasks in the best way and are more accurate in doing some tasks. towards humans.