14-04-2024
#tech
Summarise with AI
Summarise with AI
I want to talk about robots.
And not just because I have the mental age of a five year old, although that’s certainly part of it.
I want to talk about robots because A) they’re inherently interesting and B) they’re inherently scary.
I also want to talk about it because it’s a big money topic, with the value of installations of operational robots (robots with a job basically) totalling an estimated $15.7 billion USD last year.
This blog is going to delve into some of the ways that robots can help humans achieve more rather than replace them, and hopefully alleviate some of the fears people have around a demonic robotic uprising that may or may not happen…
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, agricultural practice is the backbone of modern civilisation.
As such, there’s big money and huge pressure placed on agricultural institutions to make sure we’re all well fed enough to complain about modern civilization sufficiently on Twitter.
Chuck in rising population levels and supply chain problems and you can see why life as a farmer is tough.
Enter robots.
Farming is such a complex discipline, that there’s a multitude of different robot companions that can help farmers become more efficient and increase yield production.
A great example is increasing the efficiency of farmers’ manual labour.
On average, a hectare of potato farm land in the UK is treated with pesticide a whopping 22 times before the potatoes are turned into chips and sold to a traffic cone-wearing drunk called Davo at 3am.
Pest problems (a significant reason crops fail) usually mean a farmer has to spray their entire property (or at least vast swathes of it) with these potentially harmful and expensive pesticides, even in areas that are less affected by the problem, to successfully eradicate the threat.
As you can imagine this adds up cost wise. US data suggests that ‘crop inputs’ (the category that includes pesticides and fertiliser) cost farms $56.4 billion each year, accounting for 28.9 percent of crop farms’ total expenses.
Robots are being developed that can patrol fields, and more accurately isolate exactly where the pest problem is concentrated or originating from, and determine where fertilizer may be more effectively used. If these robots can reduce inefficiency by even 20%, that’s a US market of over $10 billion dollars, not to mention the rest of the world.
Being a farmer in the 21st century is hard enough, there’s like 10 billion of us and we just will not stop eating, so the least we can do is draft in some robot pals to help make the work a bit easier.
The Internet of Things is going to have a huge consumer impact, but every technological innovation needs its testing ground, and for smart devices such as autonomous robots, this testing ground is the world of manufacturing and warehouse management.
The supply chain demands ruthless efficiency, in a way that can lead to companies enforcing pretty lax employee safety protocols. This is why organisations are bringing robots into the equation to try and make manufacturing safer and cheaper.
Manufacturing jobs in the UK comprise only 10% of the total job market, but contribute 20% of the overall workplace accidents. Globally, the data highlights just how dangerous occupational hazards can be, with 6000 deaths every single day coming from people’s working conditions.
To combat this, robots in manufacturing are tasked with three domains : (1) material handling, (2) processing operations, and (3) assembly and inspection.
Material handling essentially means moving stuff around, and this is quite literally can be a backbreaking job for a human being with our immobile spines and upright gait. The data supports this (although it doesn’t use the words immobile spine specifically) with ‘moving machinery’ being the cause of 19% of manufacturing fatalities.
Having a robot move the supplies is much simpler and safer.
Processing operations largely deal with robots who can manipulate tools to perform a process. A great example of this is a welding robot, the most commonly used type of robot in the US.
My friend had a welding job once and gave himself ‘arc eye’ (or corneal sunburn to give it its proper name) so bad he genuinely considered getting a dog to guide him round, thus proving my point that maybe some jobs are best left to robots.
Assembly and inspection does what it says on the tin. What’s great about robots here is that they have a lower error rate than human assemblers, leading to less product recalls and accidents.
We shouldn’t be aiming to replace human labour with robotic labour, but we absolutely should be using robots to make our manufacturing spaces safer and more efficient for the humans who do work there.
Onto the exciting stuff now.
I’m a huge sci-fi nerd, and as such, I’m constantly lost in daydreams about exploring space with my robotic sidekick.
It used to be this was just a silly fantasy, and the primary reason I failed my GCSE’s, but now robots are being used to explore and map deep space, and even help in the search for alien life forms!
The reason we use robots for space exploration is simple: it’s safer and more cost effective than sending a human being, or a chimp sitting on another chimps shoulders in an astronaut suit that you are pretending is a human being.
Given that 19 of the 676 people who have flown into space have died, it is much safer to send a robot. The four ‘red’ risks of space travel identified by NASA are:
1. Space radiation health effects of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and cognitive decrements
2. Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome
3. Behavioral health and performance decrements
4. Inadequate food and nutrition
All of which are mitigated by strapping R2-D2 to the side of a rocket and calling it an early lunch.
Also, robots don’t have families or emotional connections (yet) and as such, can do longer and longer missions. They also don’t have feelings of fear, and sometimes, just sometimes, they sing to themselves as they run out of battery on a distant planet.
So that’s another benefit, they provide me with material to think about whenever I need to cry on command!
So we’ve dealt with up, what about down?
Space is hardly the final frontier, as we’ve not done a great job exploring the sea yet, mostly because scientists are too chicken to wade in beyond their waist (allegedly).
As with space, deep sea environments aren’t exactly known for their hospitality to humans, exerting more pressure than when you are asked to stand up and say a fun fact about yourself in a room full of strangers. Seriously though, the Mariana Trench (one of the deepest points in the Pacific Ocean) has a pressure that is a 1,100 times increase in the pressure we experience in daily life.
The combination of wild temperature swings, pitch darkness, immense pressure and the risk of being eaten by a Lovercraftian horror beneath the waves, mean that robots are the only way we can currently safely explore the sea, unless James Cameron somehow manages to breed with a jellyfish and we send their ungodly spawn down there and ask it to report back.
Short answer: no!
Slightly longer answer but still quite short: no, we should fear people!
Proper answer: robots are tools. Tools are designed to help human beings do things quicker and more easily. Humans that are looking to implement robots without thinking how they may impact people’s livelihoods and safety are the real villains here.
If we only relied on human labour, we wouldn’t be able to explore the outer edges of the galaxy, the depths of the sea floor and we’d waste cumulative billions of dollars and untold man hours on inefficient processes in our factories and farms. By achieving a healthy symbiosis with robotics (like letting them pilot you like the rat from Ratatouille), we can create a more sustainable, successful and productive society. Plus my landlord doesn’t let me have a dog, but there’s nothing in my contract about a robodog, so did someone say ‘loophole’?
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