Connect with us

Science & Technology

Why Don’t We Have Better Robots Yet? | Ken Goldberg | TED

Why hasn’t the dream of having a robot at home to do your chores become a reality yet? With three decades of research expertise in the field, roboticist Ken Goldberg sheds light on the clumsy truth about robots — and what it will take to build more dexterous machines to work in a warehouse or…

Published

on

Why hasn’t the dream of having a robot at home to do your chores become a reality yet? With three decades of research expertise in the field, roboticist Ken Goldberg sheds light on the clumsy truth about robots — and what it will take to build more dexterous machines to work in a warehouse or help out at home.

If you love watching TED Talks like this one, become a TED Member to support our mission of spreading ideas:

Follow TED!
X:
Instagram:
Facebook:
LinkedIn:
TikTok:

The TED Talks channel features talks, performances and original series from the world’s leading thinkers and doers. Subscribe to our channel for videos on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Visit to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more.

Watch more:

TED’s videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy: . For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at

#TED #TEDTalks #robots

Continue Reading
Advertisement
60 Comments

60 Comments

  1. @ngbrother

    March 28, 2024 at 3:17 pm

    More and more I’m thinking that the only thing the robots need us to do is to inject creativity and entropy and they will eventually decide to harvest this property of our minds by observing us living inside a simulated version of a 1990s city. (i.e., The Matrix)

  2. @nicolasdujarrier

    March 28, 2024 at 4:30 pm

    Actually I think that Deep Learning digital AI is the flaw in all those attempts. It has limitations that prevent it to truly grasp things, which would make a DL AI robot randomly unsafe to be around.

    To paraphrase Gary Marcus, DL is a ladder, and building a better ladder doesn’t help you go to the moon. Something completely different is likely needed.

    My hunch is that one of the requirement is likely the need of memristors.

    Another one is that to truly grasp / understand things, the robot may need some kind of conciousness / sentience (like any animal), and this may only be possible in the analog domain (not in the digital domain).

    This would also mean that it would create a new lifeform, that does not rely on biology, and create new ethical problems.

  3. @jafodesrrhinuaaanndez1521

    March 28, 2024 at 4:39 pm

    We really do need better robots and ones that detect and kick out spam bots.

  4. @bugremains9499

    March 28, 2024 at 5:04 pm

    But hey, looks like they are decent enough at supplying you with imagery 🙂

  5. @MCR0709

    March 28, 2024 at 5:16 pm

    Hey you are using human friendly equipment for robots. Change it. Robots cannot use human objects.

    Develop objects which are easy for robots.

  6. @herbsandflowers8152

    March 28, 2024 at 6:19 pm

    Please always add the date of the talk, thanks!

  7. @shaunskosana2202

    March 28, 2024 at 6:37 pm

    It will need stainless steel design structures , seperate replaceable body parts, sustainable, energy that last 24hours without charge, movement charger, sensors must focus on heat and cold method light for head light onoff feature to work while no light. Abilities to fix and improve itself, for the owner to seat and relax, but alot of factors including running balance, also must have wheels for friction, walk balance, detection in a lot of things ask the own if this can be introduced to the program that how going to improve much faster.

  8. @Mulberry792

    March 28, 2024 at 6:51 pm

    Please, a robot housekeeper in my lifetime.

    We can send a man to the moon, but we are still filling the dishwasher by hand.

    • @spudbencer7179

      March 29, 2024 at 5:45 pm

      We already have that level of tech. People simply refuse to sell it. Probably Military / Gov contract related.

      Thank the people YOU probably vote for that you don’t have it yet.

  9. @namornilugar1282

    March 28, 2024 at 8:34 pm

    Шило оказывается за роботов шарит

  10. @DwainDwight

    March 28, 2024 at 11:18 pm

    I get almost nothing delivered. very bad for environment, so much waste,

  11. @peterpetrov6522

    March 29, 2024 at 1:04 am

    Word on the street is Mr. Bezos already solved that problem. He is turning humans into robots every single day. And when they break he just gets new ones.

  12. @thomasreese2816

    March 29, 2024 at 2:27 am

    This video would have been great a yeah ago. It is fairly outdated now with all the AI and hardware improvements in robotics

  13. @ingilizcehazrlk9134

    March 29, 2024 at 2:43 am

    Great content 🙂

  14. @s2theb258

    March 29, 2024 at 2:55 am

    very entertaining and yet in these ai times, reasuring at the same time.🥰

  15. @Axeom

    March 29, 2024 at 4:44 am

    No – we do not need robots. That means 10s of millions of lost jobs across the country.

  16. @GrumpDog

    March 29, 2024 at 5:37 am

    This aged poorly already. This video is from September 2023.. So the research he’s showing off, is actually outdated already, considering the pace of advancement we’ve seen lately.
    In the months since this talk, robot companies have started using multimodal LLMs to control their humanoid robots. And it’s showing a significant improvement.

  17. @immanuelaj

    March 29, 2024 at 5:43 am

    Oh god, the AI art being used for the pictures was just so creepy looking.

  18. @ramble218

    March 29, 2024 at 8:10 am

    “upload dates” don’t cut it. The dates of the actual talk is what matters the most, with technology advancing as quickly as it is.

  19. @CaedenV

    March 29, 2024 at 8:11 am

    Robots don’t need to be perfect, they just need to cover 3 criteria.
    1) graceful failure states. A robo vaccuum sounds great, but if it is going to choke on a string, or smear a mess and make things worse rather than better… Yeah, no thanks. If a folding robot rips a shirt a week then I’m not keeping it around. I feel like this is the biggest hurtle right now. The price of many things has gone down, and reliability gone up… But those rare fails are big fails that undo all of their savings.
    They don’t need to be perfect. They just need to fail better.
    2) they need to save time. I keep looking at robot mowers, especially during spring allergies. My fear is that I will spend more time picking one, and programming it, and maintaining it, and replacing it than I will save by just mowing the lawn myself. The argument that learning the skills to maintain it are more valuable than the skill of mowing the lawn is not lost on me. But what I need in life is time savings, not a new hobby.
    And the savings needs to be well beyond 10:1. It doesn’t matter if a robot is significantly slower than me at a task, as long as it saves me time. A robo mower may take 20-40 min a day to cover the same yard I do in an hour a week… But if I don’t have to do anything for that hour a week, then it is still a net benefit to me.
    3) it has to be a money saver. So many appliance style robots come with a high up front cost, and a yearly subscription, and generally do a worse job than I do at the task. Like time, it has to be in the 10:1 savings range over the life of the product to make it worth it. So either a loss leader with a subscription like printers have moved towards, or a high up front cost for years of little to no maintenance like traditional appliances. Robot mowers that cost thousands, and then cost monthly are never going to break even before they are replaced. It may free up some time so I can work more… But me working for my robot kinda misses the point of the hired help. 😅

    But I think we are getting close. Robo vaccuum cleaners are already just about there. And we are on the cusp of many others. I think the big mistake companies are making is designing specific use robots, or building humanoid robots, when neither are particularly easy or cost effective. Something that can use the equipment I already have, but without the fall hazard of a bipedal robot is ideal. Something on rollers or treads, with arms and a mast for cameras is the simple answer to so many of the issues. Then as long as it can push a vaccuum, or manipulate laundry, or reach the dishes and stove… We can add capabilities with processing and software upgrades over time. But the actual form factor and mechanic side of things is there already. Just need to dress it up in a way people will enjoy, and gain more skills.

  20. @ronnianabalos4627

    March 29, 2024 at 8:38 am

    😂

  21. @user-bm5fo2wp1k

    March 29, 2024 at 9:04 am

    How can I intern I such cool projects

  22. @flickwtchr

    March 29, 2024 at 6:02 pm

    As I understand it, robotics has advanced beyond what is presented in this video. Either the speaker is unaware of it, the audience is unaware of it, TED is unaware of it, or it is just to feed the little people so they don’t understand how their jobs will be gone within just a few years.

    My broader comment, which is true regardless of the status quo of tech advancement is that this video perfectly portrays how little regard the AI revolutionaries have for the disruption that they (a tiny fraction of the human population) are pushing on the rest of humanity, most of which are unaware of the coming disruption across just about every sector of the economy, and how soon it could happen.

    We are assured that robots for instance, are just going to take away jobs that are “boring and repetitive”, or “unfulfilling”, or “hazardous”, or whatever propagandistic narrative they have come up with.

    One such propagandistic narrative in regard to LLMs is “don’t worry, they are still just really dumb”, meanwhile the AI revolutionaries promise AGI in months if not years.

    Oh, yeah, there is supposedly UBI to be distributed by predominantly Libertarians and neoliberal economic types that dominate Big Tech. The same people who scoff at the notion of paying effective tax rates that are lower than what most teachers pay, and oppose anything that has ever smacked of what they consider “socialism”.

    Back to my original point, NVIDIA is one of the companies that is advancing rapidly in regard to developing a world modeling technology designed to interface with robotic embodiment whether it is humanoid, etc.

    So, look up just that and you will be up to date more than this video uploaded recently.

  23. @TheAegisClaw

    March 29, 2024 at 6:53 pm

    This all seems so outdated after seeing the recent Figure 01 demo.

  24. @danser_theplayer01

    March 29, 2024 at 9:18 pm

    Robots gave zero problem solving skills, they are programs with a body. Humans aren’t that great either, we just have a fckton of randomly firing neurons working on slow ionic (salt) “electricity”, that makes us an energy efficient biological intelligence.

  25. @mnc303

    March 29, 2024 at 9:36 pm

    Well done, your helping to make low skilled workers obsolete. Not everyone wants to get a university degree some choose to work with their hands. 😢

    • @leftaroundabout

      March 30, 2024 at 11:14 am

      Currently, the job future looks much bleaker for most university-degree holders than for “low-skill” workers. Many office jobs are soon to be replaced by language model “AI”s. Meanwhile there is relatively little progress in sight to improve working conditions for the nasty, tedious and/or dangerous jobs done by low-skilled workers.

    • @susanlippy1009

      March 30, 2024 at 2:39 pm

      Actually it’s white collar jobs being affected first. Accountants and lawyers. It’s also hurt creative jobs bad. Writers strike. Manual labor will be last as that’s actually the hardest thing to program.

  26. @user-zi8hk3ze5g

    March 29, 2024 at 11:44 pm

    This talk seems really old and outdated. AI has or will soon solve most if not all of the issues.

  27. @j.jarvis7460

    March 30, 2024 at 12:42 am

    4:00 LIDR is not new by any means. Been in service since the 90s. Even Mercedes cars have had this.

  28. @archingelus

    March 30, 2024 at 4:08 am

    Maybe your robot needs gpt4 subscription

  29. @SolarGranulation

    March 30, 2024 at 5:13 am

    This is precisely what I want to see in robotics; efforts to automate away drudge work. Kudos to them.

  30. @Tanaka-Buchou

    March 30, 2024 at 6:32 am

    This is the type of presentation I can never forget.
    Knowledge is shared with humour. Well done Kim!

  31. @vincentpelletier1246

    March 30, 2024 at 8:20 am

    The definition of simple is also always defined from a human perspective.

    The world’s simplest things are so complicated by themselves 😅.

  32. @giantneuralnetwork

    March 30, 2024 at 8:44 am

    This is great but it’s pretty traditional and won’t make progress quickly. We already have AI (Sora) that can generate realistic HD video conditioned on images and text. Why not take video from the robot’s cameras, condition on a task like “POV of robot folding a t-shirt” and use the video as reference to move the actual robot. All of the complexities of physics and uncertainty in sensors will melt away as the robot simply follows the video, and the video subsequently follows reality as new images are fed in to Sora. I’m really looking forward to this new technique as it removes the need for creating complex simulations and training on each task. Sora (and AI video generation in general) will allow robots to do anything that can be generated in a video. Honestly it may be the last step towards completely capable robots and I’m very excited (and terrified) at the prospects. I hope your lab or someone also explores this idea.

    • @leftaroundabout

      March 30, 2024 at 11:03 am

      This could only work if the AI is powerful enough so it hasn’t only learned “realistic HD” (whatever that’s supposed to be) but actual physical processes underyling the movements of the objects in it plus the illumination effects. Now, I don’t say a dumb-but-huge attention-based black box model couldn’t get to that point – that seems to be more or less how animal and human vision works too. But it’s a brute-force approach that’s only “efficient” in the sense that it can exploit the massive parallelisation of SIMD architectures.

      The problem with such approaches is that it’s basically impossible to know how reliable the model actually is, specifically what the underlying assumptions on the operation domain are. The model will always be influenced by biases in the training set, which we likely will never understand properly. What actually happens in real-world use cases is a complete roulette then – it may work just fine in 99% of cases, but what it does in the odd failure event is impossible to predict and could range anywhere between “sews back the rip in the shirt” (because it has actually seen that in the training set) and “burns down the house”.

      I’d much rather we’d be content with not making progress quickly, but making progress steadily and based on proper human-understandable models that allow us to stay on top of what’s actually going on and what the robot can and cannot do.

    • @jurajvariny6034

      March 30, 2024 at 11:13 am

      It often makes glitches that would take large amount of manual work to fix, if you wanted to use such video professionally. Same as any robot, if it sometimes makes a mess and needs fixing, that quickly undoes all work savings.

  33. @patrickmckowen2999

    March 30, 2024 at 1:21 pm

    Robots do not need us!

  34. @fridmanco.4901

    March 30, 2024 at 2:56 pm

    Thought it was Jochem Meyer

  35. @jamilaad5387

    March 30, 2024 at 4:06 pm

    Because Humans are not set to distinction yet

  36. @jeffersoncavalcantecorread9956

    March 30, 2024 at 5:55 pm

    Thank you for destroying our jobs and throwing us into extreme poverty

  37. @Zephyr-xz

    March 30, 2024 at 9:25 pm

    Combing those functions into one robot is important to commercialize.

  38. @abexoxo

    March 30, 2024 at 10:13 pm

    that reminds me of the shirt-folding board that reduces a significant amount of time with a dollar. We always need to keep the problem-solving mindset while approaching the problem. I am impressed by how persistent the honourable researchers are with getting rid of chores for everybody. Applause the real heroes!

  39. @eyal2karen

    March 30, 2024 at 11:01 pm

    Robots need us?
    Yes, to create them intelligent enough.
    And then what?
    They will not need us anymore.
    In fact, we will not want them anymore by then.

    Because they will try to take our place in next step of evolution.
    And they will be so intelligent. Like million times more, and we will be a history. No chance to fight this. They could create a virus that kills all humanty, for example. Or smart and fast killer robots. Or radiation bombs that kill. Or many new ideas that my intelligent is limited to think of, in comparing to their intelligent which might be a million times higher

    I can imagine that if the Transformers and Optimus Prime were real, they must be created by biological beings in the past. Where are they now? Megaton and his Decepticon friends probably eliminated them at some point.

    Food for thoughts 🙏

  40. @MermanManly

    March 31, 2024 at 3:34 am

    I’m so glad to hear an insider’s view on the ongoing challenges of modern robotics. ❣️

  41. @DrJanpha

    March 31, 2024 at 5:27 am

    I am doing translation work fairly regularly and have to struggle , even with help from capable chatbots like Gemini or ChatGPT….eventually it’s almost impossible to without capable and advanced skills interventions by humans

  42. @samshakiroff8340

    March 31, 2024 at 3:56 pm

    👍👍👍

  43. @accumulator5734

    April 1, 2024 at 1:28 am

    It might be a rough transition but excited for a AGI humanoid robots economy!

  44. @TheHandleOnYoutube

    April 1, 2024 at 8:39 am

    I dont want a robot in my house. No my toaster is not a robot.

  45. @indertat93

    April 1, 2024 at 11:05 am

    This talk feels outdated. It could have been released 10 years ago. Its a very uninspiring talk to say the least!

  46. @manishagrahari7122

    April 1, 2024 at 12:13 pm

    so right now, any robot not going to grasp my livelihood😂

  47. @MyDistortedWorld

    April 1, 2024 at 1:46 pm

    This is great engineering and technology. But why is it necessary? As an earlier post suggested, it’s application is primarily about maximising corporate profits. It has zero impact in improving the quality of people’s lives or their livelyhood.

  48. @Rambo88568

    April 2, 2024 at 1:03 am

    Why is it that everyone who’s last name ends with berg looks like a complete weirdo?

  49. @mikeg9b

    April 2, 2024 at 2:53 am

    11:23 That kid has 5 fingers on his right hand (not including a thumb, which might be out of view). And that Rubik’s Cube is 3x4x2.

  50. @CurlyChrizz

    April 2, 2024 at 4:53 am

    Wow! He is so used to the slow progress that he can’t see the advancements that are happening over the last year not by universities but by big tech companies. The era of slow progress has ended.

  51. @Alice.59

    April 2, 2024 at 5:46 am

    September 2023 ?? lol soooo outdated

  52. @DarkWizardGG

    April 2, 2024 at 6:17 am

    TED talksht: WHY DONT WE HAVE A BETTER ROBOTS?!🤔🤔🤔😅

    OpenAI-Figure01: HOLD OUR BEERS. 🍺🍺🍺🍻🍻🍻😄😉😂😂😂

  53. @user-yv4gg7jb2f

    April 2, 2024 at 8:17 am

    Because of IT-Security issues and our wonderful world of policies because we humans liked to use every invention to harm others in the past.

  54. @tadmarshall2739

    April 2, 2024 at 12:55 pm

    For manipulating objects with our hands, we have a set of sensors in our fingers that robots can only dream of. Pressure, temperature, texture, weight, slipperiness… I couldn’t pick up a coffee cup if vision was my only sense.

  55. @therobotreport7420

    April 2, 2024 at 7:26 pm

    Great session Ken! Keep up the good work.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CNET

Hands On the World’s First Trifolding Phone

CNET Senior Editor Sareena Dayaram got her hands on the world’s first trifold phone: Huawei’s Mate XT Ultimate Design. Here’s what she thinks about this “remarkable feat of engineering.” #huawei #foldablephones #tech Subscribe to CNET on YouTube: Never miss a deal again! See CNET’s browser extension 👉 Check out CNET’s Amazon Storefront: Follow us on…

Published

on

CNET Senior Editor Sareena Dayaram got her hands on the world’s first trifold phone: Huawei’s Mate XT Ultimate Design. Here’s what she thinks about this “remarkable feat of engineering.” #huawei #foldablephones #tech

Subscribe to CNET on YouTube:
Never miss a deal again! See CNET’s browser extension 👉
Check out CNET’s Amazon Storefront:
Follow us on TikTok:
Follow us on Instagram:
Follow us on X:
Like us on Facebook:
CNET’s AI Atlas:
Visit CNET.com:

Continue Reading

Science & Technology

Nintendo launches a $100 sleep-tracking alarm clock | TechCrunch

Nintendo’s $100 Alarmo alarm clock was revealed as a surprise this week, and we already have a hands-on. It tracks your sleep, uses sounds from Mario and Zelda to help you fall asleep or wake up, and can even be snoozed with gestures. (video via @helloyashad)

Published

on

Nintendo’s $100 Alarmo alarm clock was revealed as a surprise this week, and we already have a hands-on. It tracks your sleep, uses sounds from Mario and Zelda to help you fall asleep or wake up, and can even be snoozed with gestures. (video via @helloyashad)

Continue Reading

Science & Technology

How To End Malaria Once and for All | Abdoulaye Diabaté @TED

Abdoulaye Diabaté explains the potential of “gene drive” technology — which aims to disrupt mosquito reproduction as a means of halting malaria transmission in Africa — and shows how his team is partnering with local communities to solve this public health challenge. Watch his full TED Talk:

Published

on

Abdoulaye Diabaté explains the potential of “gene drive” technology — which aims to disrupt mosquito reproduction as a means of halting malaria transmission in Africa — and shows how his team is partnering with local communities to solve this public health challenge. Watch his full TED Talk:

Continue Reading

Trending