A European consortium is developing a six-legged repair and maintenance robot for conducting on-site CNC machining in dangerous or hard-to-access environments. (Source: MiRoR)
Exactly! Which is why I think it's important for robots to work alongside humans rather than merely replace them. I'm of the mind that there will ALWAYS be things humans can do better than robots and we will always be necessary, even in a completely "automated" environment...we are perhaps the most complicated machines there are! And we are the ones creating the intelligence of the robots, of course. The thing is, until we understand everything about the mechanics, physics, neuroprocesses etc. etc. of the human body, I daresay it would be impossible to create as sophisticated a robot. And that, in my opinion, is a very good thing.
I agree, Elizabeth--I think this is one of the best uses for robots, to do things that are too dangerous for people. OTOH, I think there's a reasonable line somewhere if humans are not to become too much like the sci-fi brains in vats with no bodies because robots/machines do everything.
I really like where the development of robots is going in terms of doing jobs that are inaccessible or dangerous for humans. This is a space where robots won't necessarily replace human workers but make their jobs a bit safer and do things they can't do. One thing I always think in terms of these robots is, how can humans evaluate that a robot has done its job correctly? I suppose if it's meant to fix something and the machine then works, then humans would know. But are there other forms of oversight?
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