Open Problems in Robotics
Robotics founder here.<p>Popular conceptions of "robots" are unrealistically general.<p>In industry, we do not build robots, we build automation systems.<p>Given the choice, would you prefer an automation system with some environmental assumptions, high speed and perfect repeatability (ie. entire industrial automation world), or no environmental assumptions, crushingly high cost, slow speed and poor reliability (eg. walking robot that accesses your fridge because cute or novel)?<p>It seems both the lay population and academia assumes the latter, but industry demands the former.<p>This is perhaps why there are so many "open problems" - because they're not actually real world <i>problems</i>: they're just academic <i>nice-to-haves</i>.