MIT :: Technology Review - Magazine - TR10: Robot Design
Robot Design
By David Talbot
Jorden Pollack
Robot builders make a convincing case that in 2001, robots are where personal computers were in 1980—poised to break into the marketplace as common corporate tools and ubiquitous consumer products performing life's tedious chores. One big obstacle remains: It is expensive to design and make robots smart enough to adapt readily to different tasks and physical environments, the way human beings do.
That's the reason why robotics have, so far, found a commercial niche only in simple and highly repetitive jobs, such as working on an automotive assembly line, or mass-producing identical items, such as toys. The challenge for builders of robots is to build more complexity into them without the huge investment of custom-tailoring each robot for a different task.[...]