The Future of Automation & Robotics in Society.

inspired to make a better world.

#Reflection

Today we are encountering the first wave of automation and robots in our society were we are experiencing the use of working robots in our day-to-day lives, on streets, sides walks, in our hospitals, etc. l can imagine the conveniences we might enjoy or the time we did get to spend with our family as robots become more advanced and for some these robots can be life-changing for those physically unable to do things like shopping on their own, a robot could do that for them. And has a Software Engineer and computer scientist, am inspired to make a better world for everyone by designing and architecting the future.

ln 2016, collaborative robots represented only about 5% of the robotics market. But studies show that with proximity collaboration between humans and robots, tasks can be accomplished much more efficiently up to 85% faster, according to some studies than when humans perform assembly tasks without robot assistance. ln 2014 robot sector was forecast to grow tenfold by 2020 with a market reaching more than $1 Billion annually compared to $95 million in 2014.

Robots excel in these applications in power plants, and factory settings because the environment is tightly controlled and there are detailed task procedures for them to follow. ln these isolated worlds engineers developed robots sensors, nervous systems, and brains piece by piece, then tested them, learned from their failures and improved and hardened the new technologies. Today by and large, complex industrial applications are heavily controlled by automation with minimal human supervision.

Today the question before us concerns the most effective way of using robots to automate our daily lives at Kawil Robotics and Kawil Ai at Kawil we are in a series of active debates among manufactures, legal scholars, our engineers about whether to automate various aspects of our lives and if so, how can we do it. ls the hybrid human-robot approach the best or should the human be removed entirely from the equation?

Figuring out a way how humans and intelligent automation to work together is what matters, in a future of human-robot collaboration, so we are to decide according to different datasets in the design of robotic and automation systems whether to apply hard versus soft against human error, essentially constraining the user from doing something that would put the system, application or product in danger. Soft automation still employs safety constraints but it considers the automation an aid, it provides an alert when the user is about to do something that may be dangerous but allows the user to proceed to override the warnings if they choose to do so. The latter allows for more human creative problem solving i.e. the user in soft automation has access to the full capabilities of the machine, whereas in hard automation, there are certain circumstances in which they do not have access and there are pros and cons to each style of the automation.

According to me, l think we need to find the right balance between automation and manual control. As engineers, we do not want to overwhelm the users with too many tasks because they might not be able to keep up and perform adequately and also don't want to automate everything and make users disengaged and fail to intervene if and when their intervention is needed. The user-robot partnership must be designed from the beginning with this in mind for us to understand how to fit robots with humans, we need to understand our human limitations and strengths including the prosperity to trust inappropriately.

The kind of digital information about our public spaces that is already becoming available can be used to help robots. "Smart Cities" are already collecting lots of useful information and they will be able to pass this information to robots. At Kawil Robotics and Kawil Ai at Kawil we are on a mission to build a digitally intelligent future for everybody.