Service robots will usher in a boom, why are humans obsessed with them?

Even if there hadn't been this protracted COVID-19 pandemic, service robots would have already entered our lives. It's just that the emergence of the epidemic has made contactless services a matter of course, and service robots have naturally ushered in a "boom".

Whether it is the round-headed, large-screen reception robot you see in various stores, restaurants and hotel lobbies, or the Boston robot dog that you can only admire online, or the transport robot responsible for delivering medical equipment and providing services in hospitals and hotels, these are actually appearing in our lives, replacing simple, repetitive or dangerous jobs of humans.

But no matter how interesting and cute these robots are, they are always a little bit lacking compared to real human waiters with warmth and emotions. After all, we still prefer to communicate with our own kind.

(Intelligent simulation robot in the game "Detroit: Become Human")

From a very early time, we have been fantasizing about this kind of all-round robot that is exactly like a human being appearing in our lives and providing all imaginable services.

Now, highly simulated service robots are moving from science fiction movies, novels and games into reality. Various types of service robots are beginning to enter the workplace. Of course, there is still a distance between ideals and reality, but we can see that highly simulated robots are still developing towards becoming more and more realistic and intelligent.

Before we have a real simulated service robot, we need to think clearly about why we need these robots?

Human-like robots are obsessed

On our planet, there are a few countries that are very enthusiastic about robots. For example, our neighbor Japan, starting with Astro Boy, has an almost paranoid love for various types of robots in Japanese anime, games, and movies, and the actual robot industry is also very developed.

Japan already has a theme hotel staffed entirely by robots, who can complete tasks ranging from welcoming guests, guiding transportation, cleaning to pouring coffee. Only when things really cannot be handed over to robots will humans do the work, but customers usually don't see these humans.

Such a strange hotel scene is naturally designed for those customers who attach great importance to privacy, so as to avoid being disturbed by real employees and being embarrassed after encountering guests.

Japan's robot culture is a product of a combination of factors such as technological worship of mechanical automation, a reserved national culture, and an aging population.

In contrast, the fighting nation of Russia presents a very simple sense of reality in its simulated robots.

Recently, a Russian robotics startup Promobot invented a simulated robot that "looks like a Russian woman" and began to work at the document processing center of the Perm City Government to provide services to citizens. The uniqueness of this robot is that it can reproduce more than 600 human facial expressions by moving its eyes, eyebrows and lips, as well as its mechanical muscles covered with artificial skin.

The idea is very good, but the actual effect is always a little weird. This simulated robot can only provide services with stiff head movements and expressions, and its lower body is still paralyzed. The staff can only complete the corresponding services by operating themselves.

The Promobot robot company is best at "cloning anyone's appearance" by using artificial skin and facial muscles to reproduce more than 600 human facial expressions, and with the built-in language module, it can communicate directly with people. According to reports, the company has begun to produce celebrity-themed robots such as Schwarzenegger and Einstein, and was also spotted by a wealthy man in the Middle East, who built two robots in the image of the client's parents to greet visiting guests. This is indeed a big idea.

But at present, this type of robot has only achieved breakthroughs in facial simulation and is still some distance away from being an intelligent robot.

Abyss Creations, a robotics startup from Southern California, has found the biggest trend in lifelike robots: sex robots.

As early as three years ago, the company launched their first AI female sex service robot, Hamony (meaning harmony). From the beginning, they knew not to imitate the real human appearance, but to create the human body as much as possible in the ideal image of human beings. This not only avoids the technical difficulty of highly simulated technology, but also makes buyers unable to stop. Of course, Abyss also takes into account the needs of customization, and can always provide the hair, skin color and some "appearance accessories" that discerning customers want.

This year, they also launched Henry, the first artificial intelligence sex service robot for female users. In addition to the perfect body, founder Matt McMullen hopes that these robots will be more "realistic" and that the voice system can have "reasonable" emotional exchanges with female customers, while meeting the physiological needs and companionship needs of female users. Henry's companionship brings new options to some single women and LGBT people.

It is worth mentioning that China has become the largest producer of this type of simulated humans (not yet robots), but with the popularization of AI, more and more simulated human manufacturers are trying to add such elements to make these "tool humans" with no signs of life have more and more human characteristics.

Throughout the pandemic, global sales of sex robots increased by 75%, while Abyss's product sales increased by 50%. From a macro perspective, the advent of a single society has made this niche choice accepted by more and more people.

For those who are still confused after seeing them, why are these "lifelike" simulated robots so popular?

The human reasons for the emergence of service robots

1996 is already a distant year. That year's Spring Festival Gala performed a futuristic skit called "Robot Stories", which tells the story of a single uncle named Guo Da who is both lazy and homebody and buys a humanoid robot wife named Cai Ming.

This humanoid robot can not only do laundry, cooking and cleaning, but also allows the owner to set its personality, whether gentle, career-oriented or passionate and unrestrained. It can even satisfy all the imaginations of otakus and provide a caring "bedtime story" service at night.

This pioneering sketch is still a bit ahead of its time if it is put into today's world. After all, from the current technical level of service robots, it has only reached a high degree of humanoid simulation, and is far from reaching the level of true intelligence in terms of emotional communication. But even though it can only reach this level now, it can actually satisfy many people's imagination of service robots.

Service robots realize their value mainly from two aspects: tool function and emotional function.

From the perspective of tools, robots engaged in specialized services can replace repetitive and mechanical labor, which can greatly improve the efficiency of human resources. According to scientists' optimistic predictions, by 2045, half of the world's jobs will be replaced by robots, which means that we will subcontract as many jobs as possible to robots. Currently, industrial workers and truck drivers are already quite threatening, and in the future, more service robots will be put into use to replace more personalized and delicate jobs. The bad news is that humans will lose a lot of jobs, but the good news is that humans will also have a lot of leisure time.

In the future, people will spend most of their leisure time in a rich virtual world and cheap robot services. This trend can already be seen today, and the emotional value of service robots has been highlighted. Although most humanoid simulation robots are still a kind of "objectified" tool, many people buy them at high prices mainly to do a lot of "shameful" things, but the companionship and emotional sustenance functions of these service robots are also evident.

That is, some people will really "love" their service robots, and even plan to marry them and spend the rest of their lives with them. For many people, this kind of "machine companion" not only avoids the quarrels and interpersonal conflicts that would occur with real people, but also gives people a sense of self-confidence and control because of this "obedient" companionship.

With the advent of a single society in the future, costly real-person social interactions will gradually be replaced by the emotional functions of service robots. The root cause of the rise of service robots lies in us humans.

The path to symbiosis between humans and service robots

Ever since humans began to imagine artificial intelligence robots, we have been discussing whether humans and robots will eventually become enemies or coexist harmoniously. Many dystopian science fiction movies regard awakened artificial intelligence as a huge threat to humanity. Now it seems that this concern may be both right and wrong.

Firstly, the development speed of artificial intelligence cannot keep up with the time predicted in science fiction films. Most of the current artificial intelligence is still in the stage of "more artificial than intelligent", and the possibility of robots threatening humans is still slim. Secondly, we humans not only look forward to robots replacing humans in various fields and liberating human resources, but we can also easily adapt to the life of "harmonious coexistence" of these robots.

But this is also where the worry lies. We are indeed too easily dependent on external tools, not to mention such tools that have a certain degree of human intelligence, and now these humanoid robots that can be "indistinguishable from the real thing".

Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori hypothesizes that robots that are as faithful to human appearance as possible can reduce people's fear when using humanoid robots. In fact, humans are so easy to "deceive themselves" that once these programmed robots are given a human appearance, we accept their existence with almost no resistance.