A robot’s usability

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

By MICHAEL JOHN UGLO
GOOD day all. This is the sixth and the last in the series of our lectures on robotics.
I hope you have found the information on robotics very useful for PNG for education in schools as well as its applications in areas such as medicine, industries, commerce, agriculture and so on.
Now let’s commence the lecture to conclude what we have learnt so far.
There are approximately 10 million robots in use in the world today. The country that leads in the use of robots is Japan. Bionics and biometrics use the methods of locomotion used by animals to employ movements. Such has been demonstrated by the bionic kangaroo designed to demonstrate the way in which the kangaroo jumps. Other interesting areas are seen in the field of quantum computing and it is called quantum robotics in which the computer programmes can be done in quantum computing that will run faster than what is currently done in the digital computing algorithms.

Robotics application is an academic subject that is studied in an integrated approach in the engineering and sciences with computing. Robotics learnt in some middle and high schools particularly in the United States has shown greater interests and excitement by students especially its applications in artificial intelligence, computer programming and robotics itself on the whole and its uses.
With computer programming, a real-world problem can be reduced to a virtual structure to derive solutions in a more accurate manner. Such intricate structures and methods of iterations and communication in recursive enumerability and recursion has astounded and captured the attention and interests of students in the schools.
It is also its applications in industries that do tireless repeated jobs that affix much quality output not comparable to a human standard. This connotes its profitability in terms of its commercial value. Japan has employed robots in its car factories that sell its manufactured world class vehicles around the world. Its economic and technology success is attributed significantly to the use of robots.
Robotics engineers are hard at work to find new uses for robots. They are also researching into expanding the potential use of robotics across a vast field of areas to find new uses such as employment, agriculture, medical, industrial and commerce. When robots are performing jobs such as fire rescue operations or rescuing people from collapsed buildings, or shipwrecks and cleaning up highly radioactive waste areas, it demands an ingenious engineering work in terms of the mechanical structures and well as the electric and electronic components called mechatronics that play the pivotal role.
Further to the above structure is the computer programme in the algorithms that brings the well-designed robot into performing the useful jobs as required.
On the other hand, robots are found to be used increasingly in the industries and are seen to increase the efficiency, productivity and hence profitability. In so doing, automation is seen on the contrary to displace humans from their jobs increasingly from the lower levels and increasingly into the middle class or level of jobs.
That is also argued to be caused by social policies and is not caused by the deployment of robots. One of the greatest scientists of all time stated “the automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining”.
The GlobalData reported in September 2021 that the robotic industry worth of 45 billion US dollars which is about K135 billion industry and it grows at a compounded interest rate of 27 per cent. In 2030 it is projected the robotic industry will be worth US$568 billion which is about K1.704 trillion. PNG can stand to benefit from this trend as it makes headway into the commercial world in the arena of global trade in any area like industries, agriculture, medicine, education and training of its citizens in this technology.

The discussion on robotics will be incomplete without refining and illuminating the idea on the benefit and cost of its innate benefits and costs. Occupational health and safety with its implications are profound. The substitution of human workers with robots to do tasks are examined in the sites that are unhealthy in terms of dirt and disease-causing microbe infested sites such as sanitation sites, all forms of trash collections at dirty sites, working at nuclear radioactive sites and basically all unsafe areas can be replaced by robots.
At the industrial levels would encompass the very minute tasks such as photolithography and production of computer chips for communication can be done by robots for precision and repeatability. Also, the bigger jobs in industrial plants such as car factories and other manufacturing industries that involve precision and repeatability as well will demand the use of robots. Areas in health such as surgery that involves precise operations and diagnosis can also involve robots programmed with a user interface for human-robot interaction.
As robots are programmed to detect and work on very specific sites, it is much needed in the medical industries for correct therapy and diagnosis of diseases and sicknesses. Also, operations for removal of tumors or implantation of organs can involve robots with a collaborative effort and supervision from the medical experts to do a fine job. Hence, it is seen that the suitability of human involvement are applicable in areas where adaptability, good judgement and decision are required. For more refined and precise work, it can be left to the robots and man can play only an operator’s role.
In agriculture, labourious farming and herding tasks can be performed by robots and man can also play a supervisory role to maximise labour efforts and production. Harvesting, sorting and loading and unloading onto and from trucks or vehicles for delivery can also be done by robots to ease these laborious tasks.
In this instance, a robot-human collaboration of tasks is very much sought. Discussions and deliberations into this area is very paramount because it does help where much human labor is required and seeing that the return is small will make human abandon agricultural sites for wage earning jobs in towns and cities as it is the defining question at present.
The signals such as sound, heat, light, smell, pressure, water, facial expressions and body gestures can be used as all forms of methods of generation of signals. These signals are passed on to a robot’s inbuilt computer software to process them and occupies its workspace in the main memory.
After that process, the information is then relayed to the appropriate actuators in a direct or an even an inverse function to accord the particular action to perform instantaneously or to facilitate an action that is required. That particular action is proportional to the magnitude of the force that will be applied, the direction that it will take and the gentleness or the hardness of that action is all calculated and determined.
This action is abstract and is a more direct approach to solving a subtle task and will affect the finite elemental approach. Hence, for a signal such as a microwave to travel is computed in a differential function and an independent variable or as in an ordinary differential function can compute values of a dependent variable that is undefined. In this instance, the application of the computable abstraction algorithms programed in a robot performs this task. Hence, in that manner any deviations as the error growths is reduced to seem as fine as possible and consumable to the human mind.

Next week: Artificial Intelligence.
My Prayer for PNG today is: “We remember how You loved us through Your death, and still we celebrate for You are with us here. We believe that we will see you, when You come, in Your glory Lord. We remember, we celebrate, we believe.”

• Michael John Uglo is a science textbook author and lecturer in avionics, auto-piloting and aircraft engineering. Please email comments to: [email protected]