Rapidly advancing robot appendages are in vogue lately, and they’re going to change how we do everything.
When it comes to robot design, there are the pragmatists and the biomimetics. The pragmatists will design a robot that efficiently carries out its designated function without much worry about what the finished product looks like. As long as it can complete its repetitive task day-in and day-out, who cares about the cosmetics? An industrial robot arm that holds a welding torch, for example, isn’t much of an “arm” at all, but rather something that could easily be mistaken for a sci-fi villain.
But the biomimetics school of thought aims to duplicate a lifelike quality in its robots. Consider the Replicants of Blade Runner, robots so lifelike that they are routinely mistaken as biological humans. They are fiction, however; contemporary robotic technology has to overcome all kinds of challenges in order to move like a human and exhibit convincing fluid motion.