Next10 and robotics

The Next 10 Years: Robotics

What is this technology?

Robotics is the diverse field of technology concerned with the design, development and constructions of robots.

Again, this technology is not new but what is happening in the robotics arena is nothing short of groundbreaking.

So where will it go next?

What will happen?

Arnie as the Terminator

We're not going to see the cyborgs of Hollywood heroes like the Universal Soldier or the Terminator in the next 10 years but we will see an explosion in the robotics arena, with ever increasing applications in the industrial, military, medical, and domestic sectors.

Robotics research is overcoming many of the barriers that have previously slowed progress.  Static robots employed in factories are already sophisticated but their cousins that need to move like a human or an animal over uneven terrain have struggled.  Projects like BigDog are showing that these challenges are being overcome and robots can move out into the wild (let's hope they don't turn feral).

Watson supercomputer at the heart of Blue Brain project

Teaching robots to think seems like a daunting challenge but projects such a Blue Brain (IBM's attempt to reverse engineer the human brain) will move robots from unthinking slaves to reasoning, problem solving, human-like entities.

The military applications are both exciting and frightening.  Rather than endanger their men and women, military powers will send in robots to do this work.  More sophisticated drones will develop to spy on and terminate threats without the need for human pilots or gunners.  Unlike today's drones that move at an almost sedentary pace, ultrasonic speed will send these agents of death to their targets in minutes, wherever they are in the world.

Robots will assist or even replace surgeons for performing the most intricate or surgery.  Metal scalpels will be consigned to the scrapheap as lasers make incisions and nanobots heal tissue and organs without the trauma of invasive surgery.

Robots will remove much of the grunt work from geriatric and invalid care and may even provide companionship for lonely souls.

How will this impact society?

Robots have long been employed in industry building cars, computer circuit boards and a multitude of precision instruments and our dependence on robots for engineering will continue to increase

Cylon centurion (Battlestar Galactica)

Robots will begin to enter the domestic sphere through labour saving devices in the home.

Medical equipment (MRI, CAT) will be rolled out in more hospitals and clinics and will become more affordable.  Use of these robotic wonders will become routine for early diagnosis of illness rather than detection of more developed problems.

Military operations will partner robotic machines to perform aerial and terrestrial insurgence to enemy positions to transmit detailed surveillance information.  Targeted attecks aginst the enemy by aerial drones and robotic successors to present-day tanks will reduce enemy defences to shreds.  Human forces will only be sent in to areas where enemy positions are already decimated.  The loss of life on the technologically equipped side will be minimal whereas the opposing side will be virtually eliminated.  With the odds of success heavily weighed against them only psychotic commanders would take the offensive against a technologically superior opposition.

Cylons will not have destroyed the earth or enslaved its inhabitants within the next 10 years !

What supports this prediction?

Reverse engineering the human brain

Riba the Robo-nurse

Nanorobotics

Robot wall climber

Hypersonic travel