Even since the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1800, the steam engine was the popular icon of all. But, with the 1900s, came automobiles, and with the 2000s, came factory workers that were made of steel and ran on electricity. They did everything from packing, cutting, painting, over and over again. But, with robots on wheels, in air, and underwater, everything was about to change. Here is how today?s mobile robots keep humans from harm?s way, every day.
Forefront of Technology
A robotics company called 4Front Robotics is developing a prototype called Navig8 that can go inside fire-filled and collapsed buildings and get the vital information the rescue operators need to speed up their efforts and save more lives. These unmanned drones were also used to send it inside the nuclear reactor after its explosion to analyze the damage and threat level to humans. Without these brave caskets of steel, more human lives could have been put to risk, without even knowing if there was anything worth saving in the first place.
In case of a lot of situations ranging from one just described above to more dangerous cases like during natural calamities like floods, hurricanes or forest fires. It is not advisable to send in humans to these dangerous places and risk their lives. Instead, if you could send an unmanned drone or a ground vehicle that can assess the situation, possibly map the environment, and complete the objectives on its own, you could keep a lot of lives from harm?s way.
With vital information, humans can now make informed decisions and probably save more lives in peril, accommodate resources in time, and act quickly. When each second counts, technology is the only place that you can work on. We cannot make humans invincible to fire or cold, but we can make drones that can go to such areas for us.
Mobile robotics is a field of study that delves exactly into that. Usually, these branches of study and disciplines are not so widespread today, but the world is catching up pretty fast. Especially, with the advancement of AI and CV techniques, their applications together with robotics are making more sense than ever before.
Big giants like Google, Alibaba, Xiaomi, and IBM are pouring billions in funding to become the pioneer and the world leader in these technologies.
Pros
- These robots take action in risky situations, help bring valuable information and assist humans to make the right decisions.
- They help save time, and this means life.
- They are unmanned.
Cons
- There is more to do to make them more accessible and widely usable.
- They are not completely unsupervised.
Thoughts on Future
The future seems really promising especially that several disciplines are working together, especially mobile robotics and computer vision faculties around the world. The electronics and processing power/computing technologies are the second pillar that makes these operations possible. With faster computers, sensors, the researchers can achieve now what was unsought and impossible earlier.