This TED Talk features biomedical engineer Giata Gervoni, recorded live at TED-2018.

So, robots can be programmed to do the same task millions of times with minimal error,

something very difficult for us, right? And it can be very impressive to watch them at work.

Look at them. I mean, I could watch them for hours. No? Well, what is less impressive is that

if you take this robot out of the factories, where the environments are not perfectly known

and measured like here, to do even a simple task,

it doesn't require much precision,

and this is what can happen.

I mean, opening a door, you don't require much precision.

Or, a small error in the measurements,

it missed the valve, and that's it.

With no way you're recovering most of the time.

So why is that?

Well, for many years, robots have been designed

to emphasize speed and precision,

and this translates in a very specific architecture.

If you take a robot arm,

this is a very well-defined set of rigid links

and motors, what we call actuators, then move the links about the joints.

In this type of structure, you have to perfectly measure your environment,

so what is around,

and you have to perfectly program every movement at the robot joints

...