Handy humanoid robot uses a screwdriver, installs drywall
This Japanese robot just wants to help you remodel.
Boston Dynamics' humanoid Atlas robot may be able to run, but it could stand to take a lesson in helpfulness by watching Japanese robot HRP-5P install some drywall.
Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) released a video late in September showing off its creation's handybot skills.
The video shows HRP-5P lifting a sheet of drywall, carrying it over to an unfinished wall and then using a cordless collated screwdriver to attach it into place.
If you're worried about a future robot apocalypse, then you could fret about the robot's ability to hold and operate a battery-powered screwdriver. If you prefer to look at this optimistically, then you can just marvel at the robot's fairly sophisticated movements.
HRP-5P isn't the speediest bot on the block, and it appears to miss with the screwdriver once, but it gets the job done.
The robot is the latest in a lineage from AIST that includes the HRP-4 from 2010, which can pour drinks. AIST's Humanoid Research Group is working on industrializing humanoid robots .
HRP-5P gives us a glimpse at a possible future where robots can handle the labor for certain construction jobs. It's one more step forward in a development wave that has given us robots that can do backflips, open doors and even operate elevators.
