Articles about Robot

For years, there’s been talk of robots infiltrating the workforce and eliminating human jobs. Now, it’s finally happening, but not in the way that most people envisioned. Amazon has led the charge by using 45,000 robots at its shipping and distribution facilities, but soon consumers may also see more robots cruising the aisles of well-known brands like Lowe’s and Target. While the idea of robotics may sound overwhelming to both brand and employee, the age of robotics is robust with one thing for the enterprise CIO: opportunity.

For many companies, digital transformation is at the heart of every strategy, and software robotics is becoming critical for brands to streamline processes, automate, and stay competitive. However, according to PwC, 41 percent of manufacturing companies are hesitant to adopt robotics technology. These companies feel that robotics isn’t cost-effective, there are insufficient resources and expertise to deploy these types of solutions, that any implementation will lower morale due to worker displacement, or that there simply isn’t the need for this type of technology. This epidemic isn’t just limited to manufacturing: many companies are dismissing software robotics for these very same reasons.

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Recently, the leader of the Labor Party in the UK, Jeremy Corbyn, suggested that a "tax on robots" should be put in place. He believes automation is a "threat" to workers and wants to use the tax income to build a fund for retraining staff that lose their jobs. He thinks "we should all get the benefits" from "greedy" global corporations which have "made a great deal of money out of incredibly advanced technology."

While mass receipt of global commercial wealth is most appreciated, Corbyn's suggestions are a reaction to the Hollywood version of the technology. A suggestion that could stop innovation.

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If you want to teach children how to code, then buying them a product like the Raspberry Pi makes a lot of sense. It’s versatile, and cheap enough that if they break it, buying a replacement shouldn’t be too big a deal.

Not every child is going to want to learn how to program a Pi though -- the appeal of it won’t necessary be apparent to a kid who just wants to play. This is where SPRK+ comes in. The Sphero robot can be driven using an app, and then -- when the appeal of that wears off -- programmed in a choice of ways.

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Anthony Levandowski -- a former Googler famous for building the company's self-driving car -- has set up a non-profit religious corporation called Way of the Future. The founding of the "church" has just been unearthed by Wired through state filings in California.

The purpose of the Way of the Future is to "develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society."

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Robots are one of the main world trends in the world of technology. Automation and AI are increasingly entering our lives, and robotics is the most dynamically developing industry.

Russian company Promobot is the largest manufacturer of autonomous service robots in Russia, Northern and Eastern Europe. Several hundred Promobot robots already work in the US, China, Kazakhstan, Ireland, the UK, Spain, Chile and other countries around the world. They work as administrators, promoters, hostesses, are able to increase the financial performance of companies, the quality of service and customer loyalty.

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Whether you brighten up your home with photos of your family, or works of art, the chances are those pictures have a few things in common -- they don’t move, they don’t change, and you probably never really notice them much now either. Joto’s creators want to change that.

Joto is a robotic whiteboard -- described as a modern day 'etch-a-sketch'. It's controlled via an app and draws with a pen, live on request, everything from works of art to personal messages.

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Business leaders and artificial intelligence experts have come together to sign an open letter to the governments of the world warning them of the potential risks of autonomous weapons.

The CEOs from 115 different technology companies, including SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk and DeepMind's Mustafa Suleyman, have joined forces to form The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

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Keeping your garden free from weeds can be a tiresome and back-breaking job. Thankfully, Joe Jones, the creator of iRobot’s Roomba, has a solution -- a solar-powered robot that lives in home gardens and weeds every day so you don’t need to.

I spoke with Joe about his new creation Tertill which, after two years development, is set to finally graduate from prototype to product this month.

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Elon Musk thinks he can increase the speed of his Tesla production line in Fremont, California by 20X. I find this an astonishing concept, but Musk not only owns a car company, he also owns the company that makes the robots used in his car factory. So who am I to say he’s wrong? And if he’s right, well then the implications for everything from manufacturing to the economy to geopolitics to ICBM targeting to your retirement and mine are profound. We may be in trouble or maybe we’re not, but either way it’s going to be an interesting ride.

My friend Jerry Kew from the UK brought this article to my attention in which Elon Musk says he expects to increase the speed of his Tesla production line from the current five centimeters per second to one meter per second. Here’s Jerry’s back-of-the-envelope calculation of what this means:

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Industrial robots make many of the things that we use in our everyday lives, from cars to domestic appliances.

If the world isn't to descend into chaos therefore, it's imperative that robots follow their programming. But a new report from the TrendLabs research arm of cyber security company Trend Micro reveals just how easily industrial robots can be hacked.

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Despite the popular belief that artificial intelligence is coming to take your jobs away, accountants would love some robotic help to get them through the day. This is according to a new report by Sage, which says 96 percent of accountants are confident about the future of accountancy as well as their role in it.

Despite welcoming change, more than two thirds of respondents (68 percent) expect their roles to change through automation, in the future.

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The new Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster Ghost in the Shell imagines 2029, a world where cyber terrorists hack into people’s digitally enhanced minds and where cyborgs have crises of identity. So, how much has it got right? Is this the future?

Should we be concerned that our cybernetic development, already constantly on-boarding new connected technology, will reach a point where our brains become both infected and controlled by rabid self-willed robots? Well, probably not just yet. But the question is there -- should we countenance such a dystopian scenario? Of course we should.

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Reuters news agency reported on February 2017 16 that "European lawmakers called [...] for EU-wide legislation to regulate the rise of robots, including an ethical framework for their development and deployment and the establishment of liability for the actions of robots including self-driving cars."

The question of determining "liability" for decision making achieved by robots or artificial intelligence is an interesting and important subject as the implementation of this technology increases in industry, and starts to more directly impact our day to day lives.

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On February 17, Bill Gates set the news agenda around the world by declaring that a so-called "robot tax" should be introduced in order to counteract job losses caused by automation. "Right now," he told online publication Quartz, "the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory has that income taxed. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level."

There is no doubting that Gates' vision of job displacement is not of a distant dystopian future, but today's reality: in 2015 expenditure on robotics climbed to $46 billion, globally. A hotel in Japan, Nagasaki, is staffed entirely by robots. Even heritage British cake brand Mr Kipling has enlisted the help of 46 robots to pack its cakes.

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The everlasting debate over whether robots will take our jobs or not continues. London-based think tank Reform weighted in, and most humans aren't going to like it.

It recently said that almost 250,000 jobs in the public sector could be replaced by robots in the next two decades. This will mean billions of pounds in savings for businesses and organizations, but also a loss of steady jobs for many people.

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