Robots, Their Applications, and the Impact on the Society
Since the dawn of the millennium, robots are increasingly developing the key functions required to allow them to be substituted for humans in everyday tasks. Indeed these are not just basic chores, with technological advances allowing these programmed mechanisms to also accomplish superior tasks to their organic counterparts. From the average household appliances such as the washing machine and a toaster, to the industrial robots and artillery machinery, these gadgets, computers and engines are a unique and intrinsic part of our modern day society. 200 BC may well be considered the birth age of robots in which the Archimedes screw pump was first utilised (Dalley & Oleson, 2003) — a machine used throughout history to supply irrigation ditches with water. 1440 then symbolised a key era in which the printing machine was invented by Guttenberg (Lechene, 2014), marking the end of middle ages. Robots are now present everywhere and one might be forgiven for thinking what we ever did without them before they arrived. This assignment will focus on the applications of robots and their impact on society, from an academia point of view.
Machines are present in every aspect of our life starting from simple everyday activities, through industrial robots performing hazardous or difficult tasks for us or making our life easier and in the process saving us money. One example of how an average human may rely on a programmed computer for practicality is satellite navigation to get them from A to B. In contrast to these simple deeds, robots have also allowed humans to move on from the tedious and dare to dream, with space-exploits giving them the opportunity to seek a replacement for our home planet. The conquest of space began in 1957 with soviet Sputnik 1 — the first artificial Earth satellite (Zak, 2014). That was followed by USA-Soviet Union rivalry in space exploration and the first successful Moon landing (The Soviet Union’s Mars 3 landed but stopped transmitting after 15 seconds (Bell, 2014)) of Viking 1 unmanned spacecraft (Nelson, 2014). The value of the visual material collected by the robots sent to space cannot be overrated. In addition to the images gathered, Viking 1 biological laboratory also helped to identify planet’s character and described it as ‘a cold planet with volcanic soil, a thin, dry carbon dioxide atmosphere and striking evidence for ancient river beds and vast flooding’ (Nelson, 2014). Currently, space exploration efforts are aided by Mars rovers, which are automated vehicles not only landing but also propelling themselves across the surface of the planet examining the territory in high detail (anonymous, 2002, National Air and Space Museum).
Robots were on people’s minds long before the Sputnik 1 was sent to the outer space. Greek mythology often mentions the concepts of humanoid robots — the creations of god Hephaestus: talking mechanical handmaidens (Gera, 2003). Human’s vivid imagination has always exceeded technological advance — humanoid robots, usually superior to human both physically and intellectually has been heroes of science-fiction books and films that many of us grew up devouring and a lot of us has never grew out of. The presence of technology and ever-proceeding digitalisation inspired artists in contemporary music, such us techno-pioneers, influential German band Kraftwerk. Their songs ‘Die Mensch-Maschine’ and ‘Robots’ released in late 1970s (Strauss, 1997) reference robotics, describing this revolutionary new field of science and making bold predictions about the robotised future. These types of robots exist now within our lives, but are relatively new and uncommon.
One might wonder, to what extent robots are involved in everyday life. The answer to that query is straightforward to me. Modern society not only utilises robots — it relies on them. A simplified definition of a robot describes it as a device with a few axis of motion, an end effector (tool), and ability to be reprogrammed for different tasks (anonymous, 2008, robotics.org). With this in mind, an example that comes to my mind is automatic door system — it detects the changes in environment and reacts to them by performing simple motion activity. It is difficult to imagine a modern society with all the automatic doors replaced by traditional ones. The vision is not only impractical or merely inconvenient — the disabled people rely on that kind of automation and it enables them to function independently and with ease deal with tasks that would otherwise be very daunting for them. The automatic doors and check- outs in supermarkets are examples of ‘everyday robots’ whose presence cannot be ignored, however there are also less visible examples of omnipresent robots. These are industrial robots that produce consumer goods, from food, through home appliances, to vehicles. They are not only saving us time and money — the industrial robots perform tasks from which humans are excluded because of health and safety concerns, such as difficult works in deep mines, in polluted environment or excessive heat, lifting heavy parts etc. The robotic explorers are not necessarily sent to space — they also helps us to gather more knowledge about our home planet. The stunning footage of inside of the world’s largest cave was released today as an effect of collaborative work between Ryan Deboodt, a human photography and technology enthusiast, and his DJI Phantom 2 drone (Branwyn, 2015). As a medical engineering student I am particularly interested in applications of robots in medicine, and to these there is no ending. Robots are present during surgeries, helping surgeons to perform operations more precisely. Although we tend trust doctors from flash and blood more, it actually is a robot surgeon that makes less mistakes and is capable of working long hours without fatigue. The robotic syringe pump that I am currently designing for my final year project at university is a robot capable of distributing extremely small doses of fluid over extended time. Human nurse would never be capable of making an injection of medicine to the patient’s arm with sufficient precision level in a lot of cases, which is why computer controlled and powered with electric motors syringe pumps were first developed, now used in even more precise application, such as experiments with microfluidics. In the future exoskeletons might enable wheelchair users to walk again. Meanwhile, bionic limbs substitute for injured parts of human body with great results (Gallagher, 2014). With driverless cars trials allowed now on public roads in the UK (Burn-Callander, 2015) the world is starting to resemble a science-fiction movie more and more.
All the examples listed above, which are only a fraction of applications of robots, make is impossible to imagine how the civilisation would look without them. Robots are undoubtedly integral part of human past, present and future and they impact society in many ways.
Firstly, robots performing the chores for us save us time, which then can be used on other activities. In the past, industrial robots capable of doing manual jobs made a lot of human workers redundant. This might be viewed as a bad thing: creating unemployment, but in fact was beneficial — people do not need to do a lot of hazardous work they had to before the robots stepped in. Also robots freeing up time resulted in bigger demand for services and leisure sector workers, in the same time creating new work places and business opportunities. It has to be remembered that every new robot is designed and developed by a team of specialised engineers and then often operated by a technician — these jobs were created thank to the robotics. While some may argue that robots ‘steal’ our jobs and lead to poverty, my opinion is that they encourage human to perform better by becoming more educated and specialised. When there is no need for simple manual jobs, more people choose to get better education and go into more specialised jobs. Therefore robots should be seen as indirect cause for economic growth and overall improvement of society function. Sociologists are often pointing out the gap technological progress is creating within the society — people are divided into those who can afford to buy robots to work for them, and those who cannot (anonymous, 2008, Machines like Us). Again, this can be seen as a good thing — increase of competition is a motivation to perform better. Also, robots are no different to any other, more traditional goods and possessions — the gap between rich and poor was not created by technology and has existed since the beginning of the first ancient civilisations. Kelly (2014) says that ‘job- killing impact of technological change is as old as capitalism itself’ and it is difficult not to agree with the statement. Throughout the history there always have been threats on the population that a new era is about to start due technological breakthrough and the visions were most often scary and unpleasant and, more importantly, untrue. The ‘robotisation’ led to something described by economists as ‘polarisation of jobs’ — a growth in demand for two opposing sectors: high-skill roles, including those directly involved with robotics, as well a rise in lower-paid work incarnations difficult to automate, like catering, hospitality and services in general (Manning, 2013).
To conclude, the wide variety of examples within this essay have allowed us to scrutinise the applications of robots and their subsequent impact on society — in both negative and positive terms. I believe that on the whole robots are of paramount importance to everyday humans and without their presence we would be a disadvantaged species in our trials and tribulations.
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