No. Don’t worry - the humans aren’t dead…. yet. While
obviously satirical, the New Zealand band, Flight of the Concords, does shed
some light on the growing reliance of robotics in our daily lives and in the
world of business. During the coming weeks we will explore robotics through
multiple lenses, eventually painting a clearer picture of just how prevalent
robots have become in various sectors, what types of value they add, and the
consequences that accompany these innovations.
Robots have steadily infiltrated all types of businesses.
From hospitals to military front lines to automotive production to the depths
of the ocean – all these industries have implemented and realized the benefits
of robotics. Surgeons are now able to perform life-saving operations from miles
away, while reducing inpatient stays and unbearable levels of pain. Cars can
now be assembled with accuracy and time efficiencies that near 99.999%. Drones
have now replaced manned planes, allowing militaries to execute missions
without leaving their bases. Undersea exploration has just begun to breach the
extreme depths (over 10,000 meters) of the ocean using unmanned submarines,
which are currently impossible to reach using crewed vessels. These are just a
few brief examples of some of the contexts robots have been employed in, with
great success. In most cases, robots have pushed the boundaries of what humans
are capable of. Ultimately, robots have added value in uncountable ways,
whether it is in business, scientific research, or in healthcare.
While this
seems all well and good, others like the MIT scholar Andrew McAfee have stated
that we may ultimately lose the “race against the machine.” Will there come a
day when manual labor is replaced by machinery or when robotic beings really do
“rule the world”. This is a highly debated and speculative topic, which, in all
honesty needs to take place lest we lose sight of where robotics is going and
where that puts mankind – tomorrow and hundreds of years down the line. For
now, let’s just say that this blog is going to be an amazing journey through
robotic applications and innovations in a variety of field and from a mixture
of perspectives – Now, Robo-Boogie!
“Aimless
extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the
term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid
inefficiency.” -R. Daneel Olivaw
To fire away here’s a video-clip of a much beloved movie.
Transformers - Yes these are Robots,
very advanced Robots.
Robotics, for many of us, this is a
funny term indeed. What comes to our mind if you think of a robot is an awkward
looking creature; one who could do your day to day work, your most boring tasks
or practically everything one can dream of. Is this image true or rather could
it be true? Researchers have tried to answer this question and discussed it
probably more than any other technical topic. Yet, we still haven’t reached our
full expectations of the robotic future.
But what exactly are Robots?
There’s different ways of defining the concept. A
theoretical description for example:
“A robot is a mechanical or virtual agent, usually an electro-mechanical
machine that is guided by a computer program or electronic circuit.”[1] That’s a bit too
theoretical, right? Let’s understand the concept of a Robot as a machine which
simply reduces our work. So from ‘Can Openers’ to ‘Fans’ to even a ‘Locomotive’,
these are all Robots, it’s only the function that varies.
Before we try to understand how the
combination of mechanised parts, a chip and some algorithms are functioning together,
let’s take a closer look at how the Robot is built and the basic nuances that will
constitute that, what we actually call a "Robot".
The Robot is a machine that is
characteristically defined by two major parts - the hardware and the software.
Every business, when constructing a robot, have certain requirements for which
the hardware and the software can be designed for. Let’s look at an example in
this short video.
In this Robowars International video, we see how
robots specifically compete with each other, using their strengths and weaknesses,
to win the title. If we were to project this on the organisational setting the
goal is to destroy competition and to advance. To get a fair example of how this
specific designing works, let’s think of Razer in the video above, and think of
all the possible we could attribute to him or straight to the point which
mechanical instruments would you require to break a slab of Concrete, his
competitor. These instruments would be what we call the hardware. As in this case the Robots are controlled manually, there’s
no specific software related.
So forming the robot hardware profile,
is very simple and consist only of two steps: first we take into account the
requirements, secondly we put all the different hardware parts, which fulfil
the requirements, together on one base. The software part however is a bit more
complicated. Between all of our different hardware parts, there is always a
chip (similar to the ones used in our computers) that connects the hardware
with the software. On this chip we can find the programming that produces the
electric motor signals that drive the robot. This programming is set in several
languages, most of the Low Level, a most basic type of language that is
fundamental to machines. So the robots don’t need a translation, such as they
would need when using a language we
find understandable.
Friends, we welcome you to the
world of Mobile Robotics. We will take you on a journey showing various
examples of Robots in an organisational setting, we will make you realise what
they are doing for us through automation, and teach you that robots can do
things that are practically impossible for the humans to do.
