The future of robots is looking bright, with the technology advancing day by day. A new medical robot, called the Da
Vinci Surgical Robot, is making its way to hospitals around the world, with its price high as much as 1.4 million dollars.
The stocks of the company that made these robots skyrocketed on the day they announced this robot, showing how many people
are actually looking forward to the ever-growing robot technologies. This robot, which has cameras and sockets for the surgeons
to put their hands in, allows for precise surgeries and some magnification of the patient. This robot already performed many
surgeries in 2007, and the company is looking at about a 55% increase in its use in 2008.
“Green” robots are also being made and used for environmental purposes. The glider, a seagoing robot that
uses heat energy has recently crossed the 12,000 ft deep Virgin Islands on its own, making its developers and scientists able to use information
such as the underwater life and etc. This battery powered robot gets energy from different water temperatures under water,
so the engineers say that “We are
tapping a virtually unlimited energy source for propulsion”.
There is also a Dutch robot called the “TankPitstop” that fills the gas in people’s cars without
any help. Samsung, an electronics company, is making a security robot that detects danger and shoots at them. Armies around
the globe are thinking of using robots for scouting, fighting, or spying methods, so it is proven that the Robotic industry
is growing faster and faster.
Robotic surgeries – not like the surgical robots, but for limb replacements – is getting popular too, with
people without some body parts buying the corresponding robot, connecting them to his/her body, and using them. These robots
use signals from your brains to move, allowing the users to use the robotic limbs like real body parts.
Although the robots seem to give benefits to the world by allowing for easy jobs, people also say negative elements
about them. For example, the Da Vinci surgical robot, which allows doctors to conduct precise operations, might have malfunctions
that could do fatal damage on the patients. The TankPitstop and the pro-environment underwater robot could make people lose
jobs by getting rid of jobs such as gas station workers or underwater-exploring divers. The
Security robot, that detects and shoots interrupters, maybe harmful in that it might shoot innocent people. With the robotic
limbs, some people believe that they might cause electrical shocks in the body that could possibly kill people.
Although the problem
with the losing jobs may seem very negative, it can be solved. Even though people will be losing jobs because of the robots,
they could get new jobs such as engineers that check and fix the robots like TankPitstop. With the diving robots, people can
study the robots so that they could utilize them to see what’s happening underwater, since the robot only explores the
ocean. The security robots that are being made could be armed with special bullets that don’t harm or damage anybody,
instead capturing people. Also with the Da Vinci surgical robot, doctors don’t really have to use them, so they could
make some consent forms – like they do for many treatments that could potentially kill the patients – so that
people could sign and agree whether or not they would like to use the robots to aid their surgeries. The robotic limbs, that
people are worried that they might give electrical shocks, are actually connected to body with electricity – resistant
material to prevent those kinds of accidents.
Even though many of
these robots possess these problems, as they say, there’s an answer to everything. Just like how the robots were made
with the people’s imaginations, the robots’ problems can be fixed with the imaginations of both the consumer and
the producers. People are protesting on how the government or major corporations shouldn’t invest in robot-tech because
these robots will only bring negative impacts to the society because of their flaws, but the irony about this is that as robotic
technology advances with further support from major businesses, these flaws will not only get fixed, but removed all together
allowing for a more positive future for both robots and humans.