The first application of robotics took place within the industrial production domain. With advancements in tech – resulting in faster computational power, better communication protocols or even more robust designs – the use of robotics has only sped up in industries like automotive manufacturing and interventional healthcare, while aerospace and defence are yet to realize the potential.
A co-existent scenario of inclusion was created in the manufacturing environment – CNCs handle the manufacturing and production while robotic arms handle the production line and movement of parts. Alongside these, safety and maintenance protocols need to be installed to allow man to work side by side with machines and robots.
Robotics in industries, robotic arms particularly aid work in hazardous environments. Today humans, who are working in dangerous or toxic environments in order to make their ends meet, can be humanely equipped to oversee the operations of a suitable machine from a safe distance instead. Manpower will not entirely be replaced but a substantial portion of repetition in the uninhabitable environments can be a justifiable case for use of robotics.
Moving forward, another big issue looming over our exponential growth is the means to meet our demands for agricultural produce. IoT (Internet of things) is being utilized to automate the crop cycle reduces the burden on rising demand. According to Markets and Markets, the market for smart agriculture is expected to evolve up to $11.23 billion by the year 2022. Agricultural automation is already prevalent in numerous countries, yet to be implemented in India. Once crops are harvested, bringing it to our plates is next. In the food industry where raw food is increasingly processed into edible products, having a robotic chef at home is now the new buzz in the industry.
Coming back closer home to our city of Bengaluru, traffic is driving everyone insane. This stems from the recurring construction of roads and laying and re-laying of pipes and cables. If it weren’t for the fact that there is manipulation in these operations, robots could be employed to quickly and accurately reconstruct roads with higher life cycles. Maintenance of these roads would possibly end up being reliable, as compared to the agenda-based man-made counterparts.
Most of hardcore and revolutionary robotics happens behind closed doors and in mute modes. Such projects are quite often linked to government organizations under which they operate and are hence monitored under their strict surveillance and guidelines. Robotics are heavily employed in the security sector. Improving security, reducing human risk and decreasing human negligence and fatigue, reinforces, these are high investment areas with lucrative returns at a systemic level.
How can we forget the ever-developing healthcare sector, always looking for innovation? Precision surgeries are no longer a far fetched idea. Gene therapy, breaking down genomes to help identify diseases and genetic deficiencies, helps reduce the fetal mortality rate. Today, we see cases where robots are helping people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Robots are also used by psychologists to teach general social skills to children affected with autistic spectrum disorders.
It is clear that the applications of robotics in industries, in general, do much good in our world. Development in robotics is capped only by the limits of computation – of both, our brain and the computational power we have access to in general. Industries worldwide are adopting robotic automation more and more to keep with the rising demand for efficiencies in their economies. Robotics, as a service, is predicted to be the next big global trend. The future of robotics looks bright indeed!
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Video Credit:
- Robotic Farming of the Future by Mashable Deals
- Realtime Detention of Social Cues by Jin Joo Lee