Technology – do we have the wisdom to use it?

Citation

Loughlin, C. (2006), "Technology – do we have the wisdom to use it?", Industrial Robot, Vol. 33 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2006.04933aaa.001

Technology – do we have the wisdom to use it?

Technology – do we have the wisdom to use it?

Observant readers will notice that this year we have acquired a sub-title “The international journal of industrial and service robotics”. Although we have covered non-manufacturing applications of robots for some time this addition to our title formally acknowledges that robots are now firmly established beyond the factory gates.

“Service” applications in the professional (as opposed to personal) sectors include such applications as underwater systems, cleaning robots and laboratory robots, construction and demolition robots, medical robots and field robots, e.g. milking robots and forestry robots, as well as defence, rescue and security applications. In total the stock of these robots is estimated (see UN Statistics on IFR Page) to be currently worth $3.6 billion and is growing much faster than the industrial sectors.

Historically industrial robot companies have shown little interest in entering the service sector, preferring instead to stay on firm ground in the automotive industry. However, as margins are squeezed ever tighter and as the acceptability of service applications grows, we have seen, amongst others, ABB milking cows and Yaskawa Electric (Motoman) developing robot bar tenders (How Japan sees the robotics for the future: observation at the World Expo 2005, pp. 11–18).

However, our main theme for this issue is the very industrial “Painting” and we include papers on efficient elliptical spray patterns, a report on the European Commission “FlexPaint” project, self-adjusting painting systems for improved quality control and a system for applying printing to 3D objects.

Spray painting is one of the oldest industrial robot applications and robots used to be taught by having a person hold on to the robot's spray gun and manually show it how to paint a particular object. The end result was only ever as good as the manual program, but at least it gave consistency.

These days spray painting is becoming much more intelligent as sensors are added that can detect the shapes of the objects to be painted, determine the optimum spray pattern and also monitor the results in real-time. This has lead to improvements in quality of finish and also most importantly to reduced wastage and the knock-on benefits of lower environmental impact and less frequent clean-up downtime.

Reading our report by Yoshihiro Kusuda on robots displayed recently in Japan at the World Expo 2005 (pp. 11-18) it is hard not to wonder what the next 5 or 10 years will bring. It is clear that we now have some very impressive technologies at our disposal. What is less clear is whether we will have the wisdom to use these in a beneficial way.

Do we really want a situation where a mother talks to her child at nursery via a go-between cuddly robot? Or is this really so bad? After all, the latest developments in mobile phones provide voice and image communication and we use these all the time. As adults we do not think “my friend is inside the phone” but will a baby understand this or will it think that its mum routinely metamorphoses into a metallic dwarf?

I can well understand and admire the minds that create highly realistic robotic receptionist. Such activities are great fun and allow us to develop our skills and technologies, but I am concerned that they should be regarded as end in themselves. Do we really want robot museum guides or android musicians? What is wrong with using people? Perhaps this is a strange thing for the Editor of this journal to be saying but I love street music and the cranky eccentricities of umbrella wielding guides. We have already delegated a major source of our entertainment to LCD screens. Let us use this technology to allow greater human contact and to benefit our less fortunate colleagues and not to further reinforce our technological isolation.

Clive Loughlin