Humanoid Robots – Applications and Influences on the Real World

Lets a take a look at humanoid robots, their types, and their real-world applications

Humanoids have been assisting humankind in various capacities, widely leveraged in the domain of Healthcare, Education, and Entertainment, among others. As we have mentioned earlier that these robots are used for various purposes alongside research, their applications have commonly been categorized into healthcare, education, and social humanoid robots.

Healthcare humanoid robots are designed and used by individuals at home or in healthcare centers to treat and improve patients' medical conditions. These robots either require a human controller or are pre-programmed to aid patients. Conversely, Educational humanoid robots are mainly aimed at and equipped for students. They are used in education centers or homes to advance education quality and bolster involvement in studies. These robots are typically but not always manually controlled robots.

For instance, Aldebaran Robotics' Nao, a small 2-inch tall humanoid robot, is used globally by universities as a research platform and educational tool. Nao has become the face of social robotics and has also replaced Sony's Aibo robot dog and has become the standard platform for the Robocup.

Social humanoid robots are utilized by individuals or organizations to assist people in their daily life activities. These robots are commonly pre-programmed to perform mundane and tedious tasks. For instance, in 2014, Softbank Robotics launched Pepper, which swiftly became the leading commercially available social robot. Pepper was rolled out in Softbank's mobile stores in Japan and since then, it has been used in Carrefour and Renault stores across France.

Humanoids are even used for customer engagement roles, equipped with advanced facial recognition, emotion recognition, and speech recognition capabilities. These robots provide a playbook for customer engagement and can be seen as an evolutionary step from self-service kiosks to conversational commerce, coalescing the two in smart and unique ways.

Besides healthcare and education, retail, financial services, travel and hospitality, Aerospace, and quick service restaurants are also well-positioned to capitalize on humanoid robots. Airbus, for instance, in collaboration with researchers from Joint Robotics Laboratory (JRL), reportedly began developing humanoid robots for its factories to take over several monotonous, hazardous and intricate tasks that will free up skilled human workers for higher-valued jobs.