The rise of personal robots

Imagine having a robot around the house to do your daily chores – laundry, dishes, sweeping, trash. Well, for $20,000 you can take home Neo, a 5’6” humanoid robot with two camera lenses for eyes. It’s just one of a dozen robots that are coming to market soon, some aimed directly at consumers.  Tech companies are also pushing human-like robots into industrial workplaces. 

But while Silicon Valley and China invest heavily in these robots, can they really live up to the hype? Viral videos that show Unitree’s G1 robot dancing among a ring of World Cup fans and practicing kung fu have elevated expectations. But limits remain evident. During a martial arts routine, a G1 robot accidently kicked a child in the stomach, and Neo, the domestic consumer robot, still relies on a remote human operator.

So today, are these robots really ready for primetime? What safety and privacy issues do these machines raise? And is it time to start thinking about how we’ll co-exist with them, especially if they’re built to walk, talk and look like us?

Guests

• Vijay Kumar, professor and dean of Penn Engineering
• Stephen Witt, author of The Thinking Machine