Last year, a humanoid warehouse robot named Digit set to work handling boxes of Spanx. Digit can lift boxes up to 16 kilograms between trolleys and conveyor belts, taking over some of the heavier work for its human colleagues. It works in a restricted, defined area, separated from human workers by physical panels or laser barriers. That’s because while Digit is usually steady on its robot legs, which have a distinctive backwards knee-bend, it sometimes falls. For example, at a trade show in March, it appeared to be capably shifting boxes until it suddenly collapsed, face-planting on the concrete floor and dropping the container it was carrying.
The risk of that sort of malfunction happening around people is pretty scary. No one wants a 1.8-meter-tall, 65-kilogram machine toppling onto them, or a robot arm accidentally smashing into a sensitive body part. “Your throat is a good example,” says Pras Velagapudi, chief technology officer of Agility Robotics, Digit’s manufacturer. “If a robot were to hit it, even with a fraction of the force that it would need to carry a 50-pound tote, it could seriously injure a person.”
Physical stability—i.e., the ability to avoid tipping over—is the No. 1 safety concern identified by a group exploring new standards for humanoid robots. The IEEE Humanoid Study Group argues that humanoids differ from other robots, like industrial arms or existing mobile robots, in key ways and therefore require a new set of standards in order to protect the safety of operators, end users, and the general public. The group shared its initial findings with MIT Technology Review and plans to publish its full report later this summer. It identifies distinct challenges, including physical and psychosocial risks as well as issues such as privacy and security, that it feels standards organizations need to address before humanoids start being used in more collabora