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Set in the year 2805, WALL-E sent the world in a wave of “aweee”s as movie goers came out of the theatres overwhelmed with gestures of the cute little bot. While WALL-E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter –Earth class) was conceptualized to sort out wastes on planet Earth while its irresponsible future inhabitants cruised around the world, little are we realising that slowly and surely, we are moving towards a future, quite alike the movie, WALL-E.
It is likely that our readers are thinking on the lines of how we are polluting our Earth and the rampant deforestation that accompanies the “development” of our civilization, but today we would like to talk about automation instead and how we are moving towards a future that includes having robots in our daily lives.
Smartness is a quality no longer limited to phones and television sets but something that has moved further to devices. As we become used to the Internet of Things as it is developing around us, it is also time that we accept that robots will also become ubiquitous around us in the years to come. Rather, they will become so common that we might hardly notice them.
Take Google Cars for that matter. We are very open to the concept of driverless cars on the roads in a bid to reduce accidents, without realising that it is computer or a robot that will maneuver this vehicle. Yes, it is not the traditional Android bot that have been repeatedly enforced to think that robots are. Rather, this robot will sit inside the hood of your car, with its eyes on the roof and other sensors on the front and back, a navigation system that will let it decide its course and probably a voice modulated digital assistant that will communicate with you. While this seems like a massive accomplishment for artificial intelligence, similar systems (auto pilots) have been managing our aircrafts for decades now.
Another robot that will soon become common sighting is the TUG from Aethon. Developed specially for hospitals, the TUG robots are designed to handle everything that a helping hand in a hospital would do. From taking medicines to different floors, to dropping off samples in the lab or even delivering food to patients on time the TUG can handle it all. The robots come in different specifications, designed to handle specific tasks but more or less look just the same. The TUG robots even do the dirty work like cleaning out the trash or taking dirty linen to the laundry with equal ease. All you need to do is tell them where to head and leave them free to do their work, absolutely no monitoring required.
All TUGs are controlled through the command stations where you can list the different tasks you want the TUG to do. Once programmed just hit the go button and TUG will be on its way. With sensors that function as its eyes, TUG can gauge if it is about to collide with a human or a non-human and quickly take evasive action. It knows all routes within the hospital and can even call the elevator to travel to another floor. What is more, when low on battery, the TUG finds the nearest charging station to recharge itself before moving ahead. So, you need not bother to find these TUGs lying around somewhere one day. There is no doubt that the University of California San Francisco Medical Center ordered 25 such TUG bots to help them with their day to day activities.
You can watch the TUG in action in the video below and do let us know if you think that we are not moving towards a WALL- E future!
Take Google Cars for that matter. We are very open to the concept of driverless cars on the roads in a bid to reduce accidents, without realising that it is computer or a robot that will maneuver this vehicle. Yes, it is not the traditional Android bot that have been repeatedly enforced to think that robots are. Rather, this robot will sit inside the hood of your car, with its eyes on the roof and other sensors on the front and back, a navigation system that will let it decide its course and probably a voice modulated digital assistant that will communicate with you. While this seems like a massive accomplishment for artificial intelligence, similar systems (auto pilots) have been managing our aircrafts for decades now.
Another robot that will soon become common sighting is the TUG from Aethon. Developed specially for hospitals, the TUG robots are designed to handle everything that a helping hand in a hospital would do. From taking medicines to different floors, to dropping off samples in the lab or even delivering food to patients on time the TUG can handle it all. The robots come in different specifications, designed to handle specific tasks but more or less look just the same. The TUG robots even do the dirty work like cleaning out the trash or taking dirty linen to the laundry with equal ease. All you need to do is tell them where to head and leave them free to do their work, absolutely no monitoring required.
All TUGs are controlled through the command stations where you can list the different tasks you want the TUG to do. Once programmed just hit the go button and TUG will be on its way. With sensors that function as its eyes, TUG can gauge if it is about to collide with a human or a non-human and quickly take evasive action. It knows all routes within the hospital and can even call the elevator to travel to another floor. What is more, when low on battery, the TUG finds the nearest charging station to recharge itself before moving ahead. So, you need not bother to find these TUGs lying around somewhere one day. There is no doubt that the University of California San Francisco Medical Center ordered 25 such TUG bots to help them with their day to day activities.
You can watch the TUG in action in the video below and do let us know if you think that we are not moving towards a WALL- E future!
Aethon TUG Robot: Automating Internal Logictics from Aethon
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3 comments
It is interesting to know that robots like TUG and cars without drivers will be coming in near future, it shows how much advancements have came in Artificial Intelligence and use of Global Positioning System.
It will be nice if University and Institutions also work on ROBOTS which will help in the management of Solid and Liquid Waste, so that our future steps will be towards Green and Clean Development.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for visiting our blog and reading this post.
While we do agree that robots will be quite useful when managing solid and liquid wastes and help us move towards a cleaner future, even in today's world the bulk of waste management is mechanized. These machines might not be smart enough to sort out waste like out friend WALL-E, but they are helping is never the less.
What is not helping our cause, is our own desire to have more and our helplessness in dealing with things that we no longer need. A lot of us have old tape recorders, even CD players and handycams that we no longer use and sooner or later will be part of solid waste that we need to manage. Probably, it is desire management that we need to look closely into.
Here's a post from one of our authors on why we buy so much, its called the Science of Consumerism.
http://www.coffeetablescience.com/2013/04/the-science-of-consumerism.html
Do, let us know if you agree with it?
Yes I total agree with you, we do have large mechanical support to deal with the solid and liquid waste.
But this support may not be sufficient to reduce the exposure of employees working at dump yards and waste disposable plants (mostly in underdeveloped and developing countries) to harmful agents(heavy metals and biological agents). So making the existing instruments little smarter(with better heard ware and software) will help a lot.
Finally, Personal desire and awareness is also needed in dealing with solid and liquid waste management as you mentioned.
Its pointless in having a DVD player, a smart TV with net connectivity,a camera with 3G,4G….connections and a smart mobile with 16mega pixel optical zoom just to watch a movie or to take a photo….!!