Lieven Scheire

The humanoid: a robot with arms and legs that has the shape of a human. For hundreds of years, it has populated our stories and films. But it won't be long before you encounter such a robot in real life: at work, somewhere on the street, or perhaps even at your home. Over the past three years, humanoids have undergone a huge evolution. Suddenly they have a well-functioning balance system, they can make acrobatic jumps, they navigate through unknown terrain, and they smoothly recognize objects, people and situations. Why is it going so fast now? Thanks to AI and digital neural networks. The first humanoids are now on the assembly line in factories, they can occasionally be seen at events, and the long-awaited household robot is also currently being fully tested. The coming years are make-or-break for the humanoid. Will it remain a promising technology that just doesn't manage to get the final details right? Or will it succeed and will the humanoid suddenly become affordable for those who want one? What are the consequences for the labor market, public space and our daily life at home? Will there be sports competitions with robots? May humanoids also be deployed militarily? And is it a good idea to give AI a body, let alone thousands of bodies? In ‘Robots’ Lieven Scheire tells about the human-shaped robot, its history, its lightning-fast evolution of the past years, and its promising future. You can doom-think about it, you can hope-think about it, but everything starts with a thorough introduction to these wonderful machines. The world is a question mark, but talk to Lieven Scheire and everything becomes as clear as day. The first citizen of Nerdland is so intelligent and well-read that I expect a takeover bid on his person from Google soon.