Where Will Robots Have Taken us Ten Years From Now?

Robots are advancing at an incredibly rapid pace, but they still have far to go before they reach human ability. Some fear that they will even replace us humans, but how long will it be before we reach that point? This question is perhaps the most critical in robot research right now, and there is a multitude of factors which contribute to the answer.

The two main components of robotics which affect their potential for advancement are their hardware and software. Robotic hardware is far more advanced than those of the robots often depicted in science fiction movies or books. Jerky, single-direction movements are long in the past. New developments in movement have made great strides in speed and accuracy. Robots are also now able to perform tasks that humans cannot. New developments from the US military have resulted in “AlphaDog” that can be used as a synthetic pack animal, carry weights of up to 400 pounds and travel for 20 miles without stopping. Prosthetic limbs developed by DARPA, for example, can be controlled like organic limbs by interpreting the user’s brain waves. And new, more powerful low-energy processors from top companies like Intel, Huawei, Samsung and Qualcomm are dramatically miniaturizing systems on chips’ physical size and power capacity while maximizing performance.

While great hardware is an important factor in the advancement of robots, without software that can keep up with it, robots are nothing but expensive pieces of modern art. New artificial intelligence engines like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant are programmed to understand natural human language and speech patterns with neural networks, and big data platforms like SAS are allowing AIs access to mind-boggling amounts of information from every corner of the earth. Increasingly, with platforms like Amazon Echo or SAS, the processing is done on a server, rather than natively on the computer/device in use, reducing the need to pack so much computing power into limited space, and allowing for constant improvement in function and performance server-side.

To understand how advanced robotic hardware and software is, take a look at some of the products which use AI or automated machinery. There are countless examples of how robots are quietly entering our lives. For example, robotic vacuum cleaners such as iRobot’s Roomba can be controlled from your smartphone wirelessly, while Dyson’s 360 Eye takes it a step further by implementing advanced sensors such as ultrasound and radar, and uses that data with an artificial intelligence engine to generate a map of an entire house, and can adapt to and tell the difference between movements in furniture and pets.

Machine learning is being implemented on next-generation Exynos chips from Samsung and Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm that predicts what you will do next, and pre-processes the data to provide a fluid and seamless interface. Amazon’s Echo devices can be spoken to like real-life assistants, deliver data, calculations and current events all with a proficient and humorous voice that sounds close to life. New photo editing tools in development by Adobe can be controlled by just your voice, while the editor interprets your commands and applies them to the picture instantly. Drones, while controversial, provide a new format for video capture at angles previously dismissed as impossible and can be automated for daily tasks like bringing tea from the kitchen to the bedroom and then bringing the empty cup back.

Any manual or repetitive labor jobs will be soon replaced by machines–for example, Amazon is using robots in warehouses instead of humans, leading to a much greater efficiency with robots lifting hundreds of pounds of packages at a time, and coordinating with each other to maximize time and minimize slowdowns. Truck driving, one of the most monotonous jobs, will soon be replaced by self-driving trucks, reducing the need for what is surely a job best left up to machines.

In the medical world, robots are quickly being accepted for difficult, high-precision surgeries, and these robots may lead to a world where surgeons can perform intricate operations from halfway across the world. IBM’s Watson is now being used to process gigabytes of cancer data that would take physicians days to analyze properly, in a matter of minutes.

Automation is coming and it’s coming fast. As automation catches up with, and exceeds, human ability, it is our directive as a society to handle it carefully and responsibly.