Many had predicted the collapse of nations, some predictions were in line with the end of days and invasion of the earth by aliens. None of these predictions have been so real like the prediction that humans will someday begin to live with robots. As at the time this prediction was made, computers were still in the stage of infancy, at that time most of us never knew that computers will one day recognize our voices, verify our faces, or confirm our identity. The ability of computers to do all these, made situations worse because not long after, computers were able to speak, compute, and take decisions.
It all started from a simple task that calculates figures, and generates reports, to complex tasks like predicting the future of humanity with computational input.
Just as it was predicted, we will soon begin to live with computers that are designed and programmed to do complex computational tasks and the name of these types of computers are called Robots. The Robotic Industry is bringing together mechanical and electrical functions called mechatronics, which is a superset of Robotic Engineering.
Robots are the end product of Robotics Engineering. They combine features of computational, mechanical, and electrical engineering, giving them the super ability to learn new things via machine learning, store information in its memory, retrieve information from different connected sources, analyze situations with specific algorithms and take decisions that it considers most accurate in a given situation.
Although, there are general-purpose robots, however, we will be looking at specific kinds of robots.
The first kind of Robot we should look into is the pre-programmed robots. As the name implies, these robots are designed to perform monotonous tasks. Monotonous tasks are more like a repeated task or action. They don’t go beyond that specific task because they were programmed specifically for that task. Such kind of robot can be a mechanical arm which is majorly used in the automobile industries to perform monotonous tasks like cutting of car fiber, welding of car steel and aluminum, fixing of body parts or movement of raw materials from one point of a building to another. This kind of robot is used generally by manufacturing industries and they don’t go beyond what they were specifically designed to do.
Another kind of Robot is autonomous robots. These kinds of robots are designed to work independently without any form of supervision. Some may consider it to be pre-programmed because of its ability to do a task that may be repeated but beyond being pre-programmed it has the functioning capacity to receive input, compute, and take decisions. Example of such kind of robot is a robot that moves around looking for garbage within a building or room or environment, picks it, and locates a wastebasket to dump it. So the autonomous robot will ensure that any object it selects truly falls within the context of its pre-programmed ability.
Finally, the humanoid robot, which is designed not only to repeat tasks, or get information, also can learn new things from what it sees, hears, or receives. The humanoid robot is a human-like robot that has the shape and capability of humans, using computational engineering to analyze every input and take decisions accordingly. These are the kind of robots that will replace our soldiers on the battlefield, help us take care of a child as nannies, or protect our loved ones in the form of personal security. Because of their ability to connect to the internet to retrieve information, they will be the best analyzers, they will analyze business, sports, politics, and predict the future. They will live with us, learn from us and grow with us. They will have legal rights and humans may have to comply not because we can’t just do as we please but because the constitution will protect their rights.
Beyond having rights, they may be the next movie stars, celebrities, and maybe politicians. Their potentials should not be underestimated as they may be far better than us in areas we have lacked behind.
I am not talking about a robot that will come, I am talking about an existing robot and if you doubt me, pick up your phone and search for “Sophia” on google.
Now that you have confirmed it, let’s talk about Sophia. According to Wikipedia, Sophia is a humanoid kind of robot that was built by Hanson Robotics. She was first turned on in February 2016 and made her first public appearance in March of the same year. Among other things she can do includes singing, interacting, gisting, and giving her personal opinion. She has attended a series of interviews and was conferred a citizen by the Saudi Arabia Kingdom in 2017-first of its kind to receive citizenship in the world.
Sophia is just one of many to be built, we should begin to see a world where we live together and interact with machines. A world where machines become the new babies to adopt and a world where the future is unknown because we cannot estimate the extent of damage that these robots will come with but in all, care is of the essence.
