Why we need Automation more than ever
When we celebrated New Years at the beginning of 2020 everyone was excited about the new decade and all that the new year had to offer. If anyone had a crystal ball, they would have told you to go stock up on toilet paper and food, and hide as the novel Coronavirus, along with unprecedented racial unrest and polarized politics were going to rage hell this year. As the year comes to an end, this year stands out by far the most challenging year we have had in my short lifetime, and it has highlighted for me, the reason that we need automation now, more than ever.
My name is Natasha Fahey and I am our head of Operations at Perceptive Automata. While I am not an ML or AI engineer, I am fairly close to our development at Perceptive, and have been working in technology for almost a decade. I’ve worked mainly in high tech automotive and have also spent some time in Ed-tech, and this has given me perspectives on how automation will help us move forward.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has spread, we have relied significantly on technology and new ways to do things that require less personal contact and ideally more automation. While we all may not love 8 hours of zoom a day, or FaceTiming your loved ones, it really does work quite well while keeping disease spread at bay. During lockdowns, food delivery and contactless forms of transactions have become even more important. Much of the COVID-19 testing is done in drive through like settings where you don’t have to come into contact with anyone. It has been said that payment technology has progressed forward almost 5 years in 6 months due to the pandemic — certainly a bright spot among all the negativity that the COVID-19 world has brought to us.
The fact is, that COVID-19 is ramping up to rage its worst for winter 2020 into 2021 in the United States and in many countries around the world. It highlights how much we could benefit from more advancement and automation efforts across different robotics sectors — especially vehicles, last mile delivery robots, medical robots, and sidewalk robots. Currently, with the pandemic, people are uncomfortable getting into a vehicle with a stranger. An autonomous vehicle eliminates that challenge. Many people want take out or groceries left on their doorstep so they do not have to come into contact with someone. Imagine a little robot delivering that to you, keeping it cold or hot on the way — so you do not have to worry about coming into contact with a human. Best yet — imagine a COVID-19 test coming straight to your door. No contact with anyone, and an easy way to test communities at large.
While these ideas might seem like they are from The Jetsons, many of these technologies are being worked on today — and the one bright spot of COVID-19 is all the advancement that is happening to work towards this more automated future. In fact, most of the different robotics types are fairly far along in their development, but they still need to solve for human interactions. At present day, robots really aren’t that great at interacting with humans, and is arguably why humans generally are not that accepting of robots. At Perceptive Automata, we seek to resolve the human engagement scenarios that robots (to date) cannot. Our AI helps add a human element to robotic systems that will allow humans and robots to interact seamlessly.
While a more digitized, and less human reliant future may not exactly be what many of us look forward to, it may become a new normal for us. This pandemic has opened up our eyes and fundamentally changed so much about how we live. It is likely that we will have another pandemic in our near future, and I honestly look forward to the advancement we have made in automation and robotics by the time that happens. Hopefully, we have an arsenal of different automation technologies and robots who can help make future health crises easier for all of us so that a new year can once again be exciting and filled with hope in the future.
