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mkw5053 a day ago

Where are all of the humanoid robots? Get them in there with whatever the oil and gas industry uses for tapping pipes/containers under pressure. I'm only half kidding.

zorex 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's the same question a lot of people had during the Fukushima disaster in 2011. People were trying to contact Honda to convince them to send their ASIMO robot to shut off valves that could not be accessed by humans. That was well beyond it's capabilities. ASIMO was designed for the stage, not for a disaster zone. No one had the know-how to build such a robot.

Flash forward to today, we are still in quite the same position where robots can do fancy, flashy tech demos, but when it comes to doing something useful that is also unpredictable, the know-now is still not there. Even teleoperation is not a robust answer to this yet, it still has some maturing to do.

bombcar 17 hours ago | parent [-]

A robot useful for these kinds of things would look much more like Simone Giertz's contraptions than a futuristic humanoid thing.

thephyber 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s not simply that the tank might explode. That is one hazard, but spilling the chemical is another serious hazard.

tootie 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Humanoid robots remain almost completely useless. We do have bomb disposal robots but they are not humanoid. They also are only designed for explosive devices not giant tanks. Or power tools.

bombcar 17 hours ago | parent [-]

To be fair we discovered you can strap a bomb to a bomb-disposal robot and make a remote controlled bomb.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/robot-delivered-lethal-...

cyanydeez a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

despite all the replace humans IT delusion, we're pretty much still the same civilization that uses steam to generate most energy. The AI emperor has no clothese.

andwur 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Standing a safe distance away, flanked by their union rep robots who refused to let their members go to work in such dangerous conditions.

Unfortunately we can't force them to go in either. They threatened to pull the entire humanoid robot workforce if we try...

On a more serious note however, I'm surprised there aren't off-the-shelf remotely operated rigs for assisting with this sort of situation: highly flammable/explosive chemicals under pressurised containment that need relief.