The Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute in Japan has developed yet another step toward our inevitable robot-saturated future. Say hello to HRP-5P, the humanoid construction robot. There’s no shorthand for that designation yet, if you were wondering, but personally, I’d call him Herb.
Through movement planning, object recognition, and hazard detection, HRP is able to completely assemble several sheets of drywall with its robotic hands and a built-in screwdriver. What HRP lacks in human adaptability, it makes up for with strength and flexibility, not to mention an eliminated risk of injury. Since he’s still in the prototype phase, HRP can’t move very quickly, but as long as there’s a blueprint to work from, a team of them could theoretically build just about anything (even if it’d take a while).
In addition to the general novelty of having robots in the workforce, the team has developed HRP in the interest of freeing up part of Japan’s manual labor force for less intensive projects to gel with aging residents and declining birthrates.
