This is what Yossi Wolf, chairman of Robotemi, which specializes in service robots, says at the Silicon Club meeting held in Tel Aviv. He is not afraid of Tesla's robot. According to him, the idea to create a service robot was born when he visited his grandmother who refused to use a walker and other products for the advanced age
"The age-old dream to have a robotic servant is closer than ever" says Yossi Wolf, chairman of Robotemi, which specializes in service robots, at the Silicon Club meeting held in Tel Aviv organized by the ASG company. According to him, the idea to create a service robot was born when he visited his grandmother who refused to use a walker and other products for the advanced age."
"Thousands of years, humans have dreamed of robotic assistants, even if they weren't called by that name, the Golem from Prague is a robot for everything. Even two thousand years ago there were people who made a living by giving answers that were allegedly transmitted by what today are called robots."
If we define robots as terminal units that carry software and an artificial intelligence system - it seems that the artificial intelligence revolution and the cloud enable the vision we imagined since the sixties. Hardware costs have dropped dramatically, most of the processing can be done in the cloud, so you don't need to carry an expensive computer, the entire field of artificial intelligence and machine learning that enables remote learning and knowing objects and how to navigate in space - as areas that have progressed in the last two years. The wave of robotics is coming, it's no longer about buds or robots doing somersaults on YouTube, it's about the real thing."
"But despite everything, the robots that have evolved for 20 years still look like a toy with open eyes and drooping ears. Robots don't have to look human. A washing machine is also a robot, anything I can ask him for something and he will give me an answer is a robot."
"I entered the field of robotics when I thought 15 years ago that the Internet had exhausted itself and founded ROBOTEAM - a military robot. We wanted to break through the glass ceiling of robotics and come from below. The bottom line is not to fantasize about a robot that does everything, but to create the DNA of a product that needs to work and participate in tenders. A system that works in the Golani or in the IDF's tunnel unit must work, it has to be very intuitive, very tough - robust, unfortunately it is forbidden to work in cooperation with China at all, which harms the speed and reliability of this field. If you saved one person, everything you paid for the robot was worth it. Today, the IDF has hundreds of robotic tools. A soldier did not enter the Hamas tunnel. Whoever enters is a drone or a robot. The field is going in the direction of revealing intelligence, saving lives, and reacting accordingly."
"Five years ago I decided that I wanted more than the security niche and one day I went to visit my 85-year-old grandmother, and she served a cup of tea and cookies and trembled. Apart from that, she was one hundred percent cognitively. I wanted to get her a treadmill but she said she refuses to use old people's products. Instead I came up with the idea of a robot that helps the elderly. I managed to raise 100 million dollars in a short time. We invested close to a hundred million dollars in development, robotics is a nightmare. The difference between what you see on YouTube of this or that robot and a full production with international standards, planning, stability, reliability - it's like the distance between the sun and the moon."
"Today there are about ten thousand Tami robots in the world. In the service robot niche, this counts for a lot. We work in a Robot as a Service leasing model. The robot operates in networks of nursing homes and hospitals such as Ichilov. The robot knows how to receive people, lead people, assist them and optimize the business - less personnel, more service. Even with the same personnel, more things can be done."
"We won a lot of awards in the world, Israeli pride - we won first place in Time magazine, awards at CES in Vegas. 99.99% software. I was told that Japan has everything. It turns out that Japan doesn't have everything and our biggest market is there. Honda tried to produce a robot walking up and down the stairs inefficient, complex control. You have to climb from the bottom and what pushed us was Alexa, the cloud, the Internet - it makes food deliveries to hotel rooms (room service) in the world of nursing homes is very significant. There is an app store with hundreds of apps. The ability of a chain like Hilton to adapt the robot to it - where the elevators are and how much it costs and how to order drinks is a powerful project. This is a robotics end unit.”
The competitor - Elon Musk
"One hundred percent of our competitors are in China. Not long ago we had excellent news in the field of the Tesla company - Tesla Bot. A large, western company, the largest entrepreneur in the world decided and not casually that he entered the field of a service robot. I can argue with him until tomorrow if the robot should imitate all the features of the human. In my opinion, this is a catastrophic mistake that we will face in two or three years."
"The entry of a company the size of Tesla will do good for robotics in general." It will also encourage its competitors to enter the field of robotics. The amount of investments flowing into the sector is increasing. The timing is debatable. But surely robots will replace us in repetitive, boring or dirty jobs. It is aimed in our opinion and what we have been dealing with for quite a few years, we are happy that Tesla will enter the field. However, Musk claims that it will take him a year to develop a humanoid robot, I guess it will take at least three years because imitating a human form is more complicated than a robot on wheels. But still, this is positive news."
In conclusion, Wolff said: "The idea of a robot that will do repetitive boring and dirty things is an idea that has existed for many years, and its goal is to upgrade man."
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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Personal robot = diseases and health of a client. The difference between a thin and healthy person and a fat and sick person is the number of steps a day.
Yes, after the inflatable dolls and an attempt to create "artificial women" good morning, one can only hope that you will get some sense.
As someone who has been interested in the field for many years, I'm sorry to say, but we are still far from intelligent robots that will serve as personal servants, maybe in 50 years it will be a serious thing. Until we succeed in developing true artificial intelligence it will not happen, maybe when quantum computing develops we can really make progress in the field.