Robots are still inferior to humans but catching up, says Swiss study

When it comes to sprinting, humans are still faster than robots. © Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

No human-like robot is able to outperform humans in a range of tasks but robots are catching up, according to a new study by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich.

“For example, there is a robot called Cheetah that can jog faster than humans. But it has a high energy consumption, and when it comes to sprinting, humans are still faster,” Robert Riener from ETH Zurich told the Keystone-SDA news agency.

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Together with two other researchers, Riener compared the best humanoid robots (those with human-like features) with humans. The robots were compared on the basis of functions such as locomotion and their underlying structures, such as muscles and motors. The results were published on Tuesday in the journal “Frontiers in Robotics and AI”.

For Riener, the surprising thing about the results of the comparison was not that robots can’t hold a candle to humans. “What surprised me was that the individual technical components are already better than those of humans,” said Riener.

Cameras beat eyes, microphones beat ears and motors beat muscles. “Apparently, however, we have not yet managed to assemble these components in such a way that a robot functions better than a human in terms of movement and perception,” said Riener.

However, Riener believes that the inferiority of robots will not last much longer. “Two years ago, I thought it would take forever for robots to outperform humans,” said Riener. “But I now believe that we will be there in the near future.”

In Riener’s opinion, this is a huge opportunity. “Dirty and sometimes dangerous work in industry could be taken over by robots, and robots could support care staff,” said Riener. As long as robots are used correctly, the researcher doesn’t see them as a threat.

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