Abstract:

If not yet the world, humanoid robots have certainly captured the imagination of people across
the globe. This research paper discusses the current and possible applications of humanoid
robots, why they should or should not be used to serve those purposes and analyses the good
and bad aspects of the ‘human-ness’ of humanoids.

Introduction:

“Nothing is stranger to man but his own image.” – Karel Čapek in Rossum’s Universal Robots

Humanoid robotics is a rapidly advancing field with a growing stable of different robot models
and their expanding roles in society. Society has long been concerned with their impact, before
the technology was viable and even before the word ‘robot’ was coined for the first time nearly
a century ago (Čapek, 1921). As a case of life imitating art, science fiction had already predicted
the advent of humanoids and some of their applications, and robots have been both glorified and
vilified in popular culture. Tales of their extensive human-likeness along with those featuring
problems like insufficient programming, emergent behaviour and errors have ignited minds all
over.
Designed to resemble humans, having a torso, two arms and legs
each, a human-like head equipped with the sense of vision and
audition and sometimes designed to replicate human facial features,
humanoids offer to serve as a lot more than mere tools.

Fig 1. TOPIO- A humanoid robot designed to play table tennis

against humans.

The following section specifies the areas in which the advent of humanoids has or can have
some impact, and discusses its positive and negative implications.
Military

Military humanoids are the fruit of a long chain of weapon development designed to separate
human fighters from their foes. Humanoids have been developed to stand in directly for soldiers
or pilots and are coming into their own as a new form of automated killing machines that may
forever alter the way wars are waged. Unlike missiles and other projectiles, humanoid robots
can carry multi-weapon systems into the theatre of operation. How they are to be deployed in
the theatre need not be decided in advance, as
they can act flexibly once in place.

Fig 2. Russia’s ‘Ivan The Terminator’, a

special military robot that has been designed
to replace people in battles or in emergency
areas.

The robots can be deployed for tasks like disrupting or detonating Improvised Explosive
Devices (IEDs) and for surveillance of dangerous environments, such as caves and houses that
may be inhabited by insurgents. Roadside bombs have been the most common killers of allied
soldiers, and robots are used to drive ahead and search cars or prod suspected packages. Robots
have thus saved many soldiers’ lives. Moreover, they can be used to test protective clothing that
would be worn by humans, since they possess a body structure similar to that of humans and
can move like them.

However, there are numerous unresolved ethical concerns regarding the deployment of military
humanoids. There are possible instances of ethical dilemmas arising with military humanoids,
like being commanded to destroy a structure housing enemy combatants, but finding non-
combatants like children within, in addition to them. If a robot enters a structure, it cannot be
ensured that it will not violate the rights of human occupants.
Lethal autonomous humanoids can choose a target without human intervention. We are thus
sleepwalking into a world where robots decide who, where and when to kill. Given that there
are no ethical codes or guidelines in place, the idea of robots making decisions about lethality is
terrifying. The laws of war and rules of engagement are too vague, imprecise and difficult to
program to provide a basis for an ethical use in warfare.

Hacking is an associated concern, and can be extended to all other applications of humanoids.
What makes a robot useful – its strength, ability to access and operate in difficult environments,
expendability and so on – could be turned against us.

Assistance in autism therapy

Autistic children are often impaired in initiating and responding to joint attention. Robots that
are programmed to provide interesting visual displays, or respond to a child behaviour in
context of a therapeutic interaction, could encourage a desirable or prosocial behaviour.
Humanoids with a simple child-like appearance engage children in simple interactive activities
like turn-taking or initiative interactions, and elicit joint attention behaviour or shared
enjoyment in an experience, both of which are
difficult for autistic individuals to exhibit.

Fig 3. NAO teaches colours by changing the

colour of the LEDs in its eyes and body. It
performs a number of activities like waving,
saying hello and goodbye, balancing on one leg
etc. and encourages the child to imitate it.
 Humanoids comply with the need of
high repeatability and flexibility, their
behaviours can be custom-made to suit
different scenarios and offer simpler
interaction with autistic children
without humiliating or belittling them,
thus playing a sanguine role in
reducing stress and difficulties often
faced by autistic children during
interaction. They function as an
attracting agent to keep the autistic child engaged and focused during therapy and not as a
replacement for therapists, as is generally thought.

However, it has been found that children face more difficulties in responding immediately to
humanoid actions when compared to human actions. The concept of ‘Uncanny Valley’ captures
the idea that an almost human-looking robot will seem overly strange and unnerving to some
humans, and will thus fail to evoke an empathic response towards the robot. It is this
uncanniness that negatively impacts the response speed. The high presence of negative
emotions in patients could negatively impact the acceptance and use of humanoids in the
treatment of this mental disorder.

Disaster response

The hazardous conditions caused by natural or man-made disasters often make it extremely
difficult for a timely and safe human response. Given the dangers involved and the quick
response needed, humanoid robots seem to be a promising technology for disaster remediation
in a safe and timely manner.
Humanoids designed to work in harsh conditions can negotiate with rough terrains. The Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has identified a number of tasks a humanoid
could possibly do in such a scenario. These include:
 Drive a utility vehicle at the site.
 Travel dismounted across rubble.
 Remove debris blocking an entryway.
 Use a tool to break through a concrete pipe.
 Locate and close a valve near a leaking pipe.
 Attach fire hose couplings.
They can plan a collision-free trajectory using the visual and spatial information they receive
from a motion capture system.

Fig 5. ATLAS of Boston Dynamics was

designed to negotiate with outside
environments and rough terrains.
Weighing 150 kg, it can climb using its
hands and feet, carry heavy things and
manipulate the environment.

Fig 6. Simulating work in a tunnel after a quake,

HRP-2 Kai and JAXON, two slender humanoids with
tiny heads attached with sensors walk through fake
debris to extinguish a fire during a demonstration at
the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo.
However, humanoid robots are far from perfect, suffering from balance problems on rough
terrains. Controlling a high DOF humanoid robot to autonomously perform complex tasks in an
unknown and unstructured environment is highly challenging. Loss of control can occur due to
physical damage to the robot while carrying out disaster relief tasks, the high conductivity
offered by their metallic bodies being one of the prime reasons for damage. Moreover, e-waste
is a growing and urgent problem, given the disposal of heavy metals and toxic materials at the
end of any product’s life-cycle. Humanoids or robots in general, will likely exacerbate the
problem, as well as increase the pressure on extraction of rare-earth elements needed to build
them and energy resources needed to power them.

Providing care and companionship to the elderly

Isolation is a major issue for the elderly. Many old people, especially those in nursing homes,
spend their days on end alone. There has been a great drive for the development of humanoids
to provide care and companionship. Humanoids with the ability to read and respond to emotions
can do wonders for the moral engagement and continual monitoring of those in need. Their
ability to work round-the-clock and their ‘endless patience’, along with their engaging nature,
play an important role in reducing feelings of isolation and loneliness. This could also result in
the elderly being able to stay out of institutional care for longer.

Fig 7. ‘Nadine’ is a humanoid designed to

become a human companion. She meets and
greets, smiles, makes eye contact and
shakes hands. If it is someone she has met
before, she would not just recognise but
also strike up a conversation based on past
memories.
 Fig 8. ‘Pepper’ of Softbank Electronics is
designed to read non-verbal social cues by
scanning human faces and listening for
strain in voices. This data is run through
algorithms to calculate a person’s mental
state.

Employment

As with the Industrial and Internet Revolutions, one major concern with the advent of
humanoids is job loss. As potential replacements for humans – outperforming humans in certain
tasks – humanoid robots may displace human jobs, regardless of whether the workforce is
growing or declining. Skills that took years, sometimes decades to develop will thus become
obsolete overnight.

The standard response to the job-loss concern is that human workers would then be free to focus
their energies at jobs in which they can make a greater impact, ie. those in which they can have
a greater competitive advantage. Further, the demand for humanoids itself creates additional
jobs. Robots are quicker to train, cheaper to maintain and less prone to be bored by repetitive
tasks, leading to better efficiency of production.

However, arguments of competitive and efficiency gains provide little consolation for the
human worker who needs a job to feed his family. Ideas like working wholeheartedly, with a
sense of belonging and with dedication have no existence in artificial intelligence.
Blurring of the line between humans and humanoids: A discussion

With artificial intelligence for speech, facial recognition and self-awareness, robots can now
answer questions and convey emotions and speech more clearly than ever. In other words,
humanoids are becoming more ‘human’ than ever. This section analyses the very idea of
creating replicas of ourselves, but of wires and steel.

To learn about ourselves, we have

traditionally relied on psychology or
biology. But to get a more holistic
understanding of ourselves, we need to
treat humans as complex systems.
Humanoids are a tool for that. They hold
us the mirror up to ourselves and also
illustrate the limits of defining ourselves in
relation to our bodies, thus triggering the
need for better understanding and a deeper
definition of humanity. Thus, the ideal
interface for humans is humanoids.

A recent paper in the International Journal of Social Robotics, however, presented the threat to
distinctiveness hypothesis, which seeks to categorize the point in which a robot’s close
resemblance to humans may threaten our own distinctiveness and identity. Intelligent robots
which elicit human-like movements and emotions dilute our human identity and undermine
what it means to be human, causing the line of distinction between man and machine to blur.
Particularly for children, growing up in a household where there are humans and humanoids can
be quite confusing, and we could see psychos developing as a result of humanoids not behaving
as the child expects them to behave because they think it is a human.

The widespread use of humanoids in the society at large is possible only when the
psychological barriers to the introduction of robots in our lives have been removed. Until then,
humanoids may not cease to arouse a distinctiveness threat.
Conclusion

Humanoid robots promise hosts of benefits that are compelling and imaginative, but, as with
other emerging technologies, do not come without risks and concerns. The crucial point is to
become engaged in this important but underdeveloped global discussion. As humanoids
advance into our homes, workplaces, hospitals, battlefields and society at large, it would serve
us best to be informed of the technical, social and ethical issues and be prepared for a more
mechanized world.

References

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 Hao Dang et.al, Planning Complex Physical Tasks for Disaster Response with a
Humanoid Robot
 A.R Taheri et.al, Clinical Application of Humanoid Robots in Playing Imitation Games
for Autistic Children in Iran
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Robotics
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