PYTHON · NUMPY

Amplify, Not Replace

Design the division of labor between a human and a humanoid so the pair beats either working alone, while keeping high-value craft work with the person.

01Challenge

A task has five subtasks; two are high-value craft you want to keep human. Assign the rest between a human and a humanoid working in parallel so the pair finishes faster than all-human or all-robot, without handing away the craft.

02Model

Tedrake's principle from years at Toyota is amplify, not replace: the most thoughtful path gives people better tools and keeps them in the work that carries meaning and worth. It rhymes with a hard truth about knowledge: the highest-value skill is tacit and path-dependent, learned by doing, not handed over in a spec, which is why the craft belongs with the craftsperson. This capstone makes the choice concrete. A human and a humanoid work in parallel, so the job takes as long as the busier of the two. You give the robot the tasks it does fast and that carry no craft, keep the craft tasks with the human, and balance the two piles. Done well, the pair beats either alone, and the person keeps the part that matters.

03Guided practice

1. Keep craft human. inspect and finish are craft (True); they must be assigned H. 2. Offload the rest. Give the robot the fast, non-craft tasks: weld, pack, load as R. 3. Balance. Human and robot work in parallel; makespan is the larger pile. The split ['R','H','R','H','R'] balances them. 4. Confirm. The amplify makespan beats both all-human and all-robot, with craft kept.

04Feedback

PASS WHEN PASS when your allocation keeps every craft task with the human AND finishes faster than all-human and all-robot: amplification, not replacement.

If your run fails, check:

Makespan not beaten: all-human is the default. Offload the fast non-craft tasks (weld, pack, load) to the robot.
craft_kept is False: inspect and finish must stay `H`; do not assign a craft task to the robot.
Robot pile too big: the robot is slow at finish/inspect anyway; keep those human and balance the rest.

05Retrieve & space

What does 'amplify, not replace' mean for designing a human-robot task? (better tools; keep people in high-value work).
Why keep tacit, craft work with the human? (it is path-dependent and learned by doing, not transferred by spec).
Since human and robot run in parallel, what quantity are you minimizing? (the makespan, the larger of the two piles).

06Mastery & project

Design a human-robot division of labor that beats either alone while preserving human craft: the capstone of designing embodied AI for work.

The synthesis of the course: a humanoid designed, taught to move, given a behavior, and deployed to amplify the people it works beside.

← Where the Robot Earns Its Place Capstone: Design Ada, a Companion Humanoid →

PYTHON · NUMPY

Amplify, Not Replace

Allocate subtasks between a human and a humanoid so the pair beats either alone and keeps the craft human.

You read

the arrays and values already in scope

You change

the code you write in each cell

Fixed

the dataset and the checks that grade you