robotic finesse

ah, the fabled city of atlantis. the holy grail of the robot world. finesse is just one thing that robots don't have and, dare i say, never will have. that's right, i said it. i'll say it again. robots will never have finesse. "so what?" you ask. so this: why the heck are we paying good money for robots if they lack the skills to get a job done well?? let's just shoot ahead and pull a few tricks like theoretical physicists do (you know, the ol' monkey in a vacuum or constant velocity or whatever). let's assume that we have a robot that is well-programmed, has all of the appropriate hardware to do our task, and that the robot is willing to do said task (good luck with all this, but i digress). so you instruct your bot to, oh i dunno, change the spark plugs on your vehicle. not difficult. but! if you don't gently center the spark plug, and gently locate the appropriate angle of approach, and gently begin to screw it in, all the while taking care to not cross-thread the spark plug, you may strip the threads thus creating a very costly situation. now, do you think that even a well-programmed, well-equiped, and well-mannered robot can handle this?? i say no to that. first of all, they have metal fingers (maybe with rubber grippy thingys). this is all well and good, but how can the bot feel what's going on?? it can't! it just can't! simple as that. the human hand has 2,500 nerve endings PER square centimeter!! do you know how tiny those are? now you tell me how we're gonna get a robot to feel what we can. try to convince me. bunk i say. for this simple reason, robots lack what i like to call finesse. they lack the ability to sense and respond to the necessarily miniscule details of the physical world. so why did you pay all that money for a bot that "can change spark plugs" when, clearly, it cannot? it doesn't stop there. finesse and the gentle and precise control and response to a changing world is important in many situations. food for thought: would you let your bot wash your dog? would you let your bot wash your fine china? would you let your bot change your baby's diaper??? i say nay.

this, i tell you, is the trouble with robots.