Will Robotic Machines Replace Human Beings In The Near Future?

By Author: Ann Philip
Total Articles: 91
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The advancement of technology is replacing human beings with technology in virtually every industry in the global economy. Already many manufacturing companies eliminated workers to save cost and time. Now most of the car companies are using robots to assemble the engine parts. This not only reduces work time, but also saves cost. The major areas where human labors are replaced by machines are agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors. We can expect an economy with each and every function carrying under automated production by the mid-decades of the twenty-first century.

Issac Asimov is considered to be the father of robotics. A robot will have three main components. They are a mechanical device to interact with surroundings, sensors that provide feedback from environment and a system to communicate between the mechanical device and sensory data. By assembling these three parts together, it will become a robot. We can define robot as a reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator that can move material, parts, tools or specialized devices through variable programmed motions.

Based on the functions performed ...
... by each, robots can be divided into three main groups. They are industrial robots, research or service robots and educational robots.

In industries, robots are widely used for performing tasks that are not safe or unpleasant for human workers. Modern robots can easily be programmed to perform wide range of industrial applications like materials handling, spot welding and spray painting. They are also used for die casting, forging and spot welding.

One of the major tasks performed by robots in the welding industry is arc and seam welding. They are used for this job mainly because it is repetitive and uniform. Robotic spot welders are mostly used in the automotive industry. The auto giant Chrysler Motor Corporation owned nearly 900,500 robots in the later part 1900. Most of these robots are assigned for spot welding job. Robots are used in the spray painting application as they can give the perfect quality without wasting paint. Many companies dealing with die casting and injection molding in the United States and Canada were about to close as they were not able to withstand external pressure. But the introduction of robotics gives them a new life.

Nowadays, most companies are using robots in assembling operations. This is because robots can do this tedious and repetitive work in a proper way, without taking much time. Another important work carried by robots is palletizing. This loading and unloading of work materials onto pallets is mainly carried out in newspaper industry. Robots like Cincinnati Milacron are used to palletize advertising inserts for a newspaper.

Robots are widely used in the research and service areas to gather data and act according to it. Main areas where robotic application is used are space applications, surgeries and household tasks. The ‘artificial intelligence’ of robot makes it to interact with the environment and react accordingly. NASA is using many robots for in their research purposes. Robotic surgery is another exciting and emerging technology that is taking the surgical profession by storm. Though this field is in its infant stage, surgical robot will directly or indirectly help a surgeon in carrying out the surgical process. Are you interested in watching surgical procedures? Well, I watch programs related to this on my home television powered by . Watching programs like this not only improves our knowledge, but also helps us in dealing with tough situations.

The robots also play an important role in the educational field. Educational robots are used in competitions like chess and for learning experience. The world chess champions like Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik and Garry Kasparov are sharpening their chess skills by playing with computer robots. This is because robots often have the ability to simulate learned behavior. Thus, we can say modern robots are true marvels of engineering.